You Crawled Out of the Sea
by my paper teeth
Summary: One day they'll tell a story. Of a boy and a girl lost in the waves of a brutal sea. Who loved and lost, but never fell apart. Their minds stained with salty kisses and the blood of children. One day, they'll tell our story / Annie and Finnick
1. Stained by Salt

_I first read the three books when they initially came out, but I must admit to reading them a few times over and then didn't pick them back up til a week ago. But my dementia has finally found a use; as I found I'd completely forgotten the second and third book, and so was able to cherish that feeling of reading a story for the first time, all over again! _

_Annie has to be my favourite character, and as one mad girl sympathizing with another, I couldn't stop mulling over what her time in the games must have been like. And so I sat down and next thing I know I've planned out 26 chapters and already written over 20 pages of it. It only felt natural to commence with the couple's own beginning so here we go. _

_I've written and proof read four chapters already; so I'll upload the second hopefully tomorrow, as I just really want to post it. Of course reviews and comments are cherished, and I would be delighted to read any suggestions or critiques you might have. _

_Writing this has been sustained by the dulcet tones of Laura Marling. Her music for me encapsulates these two._

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_Though some of the characters and the formation of their back-story belongs to me, the concept and recognizable characters are the property of the genius Suzanne Collins._

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**I. Stained by Salt**

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'_Annie Cresta'_

The name is unmistakable, as the intonation of the District 4's overtly orange delegate's voice is blasted out across the crowd.

The name is carried amongst the sea of bobbing heads in flutters of sorrow, pity and relief.

Eyes are searching, a cry wails out, a mother screams for the death sentence tolled upon her child.

The name is unmistakable to my ears; my feet feel faint, my heart is beating more than before.

'Annie Cresta' is called out again to the searching crowd.

Their eyes, as though all at once, find my face.

I can see him already on the stand, but I can't force myself to catch his eye, to see how his face might have contorted would have made it all the more terrible.

I step forwards to receive the name; my name, and the cruel hand that fate has dealt me.

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_She's drowning _

_Her young lungs fill with water _

_She's drowning in silence, so softly it hurts_

_The lull of the current fills her nostrils and threatens to squeeze into the gap of her tightly shut eyelids. _

_The wave had caught her at the rock pool and dragged her out to sea. _

_She'd been crabbing; looking for a blue crest, just as her brothers had shown her the day before. _

_A shell to add to her collection._

_But now she's gone._

_Lost to the sea._

_._

The dream woke me, as it always did, in a cold sweat.

Dreams have always been a curiosity to me, but none, no matter how horrific or cruel were ever enough to wake me peeling with tears.

_But it's not a dream _

No, it wasn't. It was a memory, well worn and not so fondly remembered.

At least the dream spared me from the trouble that was waking. My heavy lids had snapped open in fright, so I no longer had to play battle with the lingering spectres of sleep.

The morning sun warmed my face from its gaze through the curtain-less windows. Only a thin net veiled it, to trap out the summer's plethora of insect life. With heavy limbs I stretched beneath the covers, and finally with much mental protest threw them from me in an attempt to rise. I finally did, receiving the salty breeze fluttering in from the cracks around the window frame into my lungs.

The sight from my window was well known, but had never ceased to excite me. Our cottage, nestled not so far from the main seaport, looked out across the Heraldic bay. It was only small, but it was ours; passed down through the generations of the Cresta family tree. As a child they told me that it's small rocks pools and sea glass shard beach held the memories of the world before the dark ages. They told me that the sea was timeless, and that to be beneath the waves was to be without time, without space. I wanted to be in those cool waters with all my heart, so as to wash away the drench of dread that coated my chest and neck.

The one thing we lived without fear of losing in District 4 was water. And the salt as well. Across the town one would see the vast population of glass jars, peculiar in colour and size, and their little metal covers. With the sun's warm grasp, they caught the evaporating water and funnelled the vapours inside to be drunk and washed with, leaving an army of salt filled glass.

My hair was stained by salt. I could see my twelve years of living next to the sea, play across my skin in it's warm tones; not quite as bronze as my brothers', but rather flecked with the golden dust of freckles, blown across the bridge of my nose. I had become quite self conscious about them in recent years, since the Odair boys from across the hill; the ones that stole our fish and cut our lines, apparently in the name of playful mistake, took delight to asking me if my face was dirty, the summer before when the flecks first appeared. I guess I took the fairer skin from my mother, whose face stayed creamy, even after years of washing the port's laundry out in the hot sun.

The small mirror balanced above my chipped washing bowl distorted my face slightly, letting my wavy crown of blonde hair enlarge and become wild. It put up a lot of resistance to the little bone comb I tried to drag through it, but eventually the morning knots are either brushed or torn out. My scalp twinged a little; _I must remember to not pull as hard next time or I'll be as bald as a sea eagle by next summer. _

The smell of breakfast was enough to drag me from my room, the warm aroma of baking seaweed and bread filling my nose with delight. Capitol had long controlled our consumption of fish, of any sea faring animal; but from beneath the depravity grew a resilience not to starve and so our district boasted a wide range of the most curious dishes. If something wasn't poisonous, it could be eaten; it seemed to have even become a sport amongst the boys, who could withstand the most repugnant of tastes, all in the name of staving away hunger on their boats. We lived near the main seaport; and though our district wasn't as vast as others, it covered a large spread of the southern most coast, with many little outlying villages spotted further east and west.

We all live to fish, all reared from a young age to catch and gut all the sea could offer. Capitol's soft pallets couldn't stand the taste of fish innards; but to those with far less flesh on their bones; it was a meat that could be endured. My Mama wasn't so much a master in the art of cooking, but she knew how to fill my stomach with warmth. My brothers were already sat at the table with my father when I waltzed into the kitchen. It was a sight to see; three broad shouldered men tucked together on the two small benches beside the table, wolfing down broth in time to catch the morning swell.

Thom and Ini were both past the age of reaping; Thom was the oldest, being already twenty-two and Ini had turned nineteen a few weeks before. They both shared the same-bronzed backs as my father; their necks being the most tanned from days hauling in fish under a blazing sun. They both worked on my father's boat, and when I wasn't in school, I did too. As I was twelve it meant it was my final year in school, a fact that I received with mixed apprehension. It meant I could spend more time at sea, helping gut fishes upon the boat and fix the nets, but it also meant that the year just past had been my first Reaping. Thankfully some spirit of the sea blew the cool winds of luck and my name was never called. Or bad luck I supposed; the two tributes from our District, both only twelve were slaughtered in the first bloodbath.

I went to help my Mama at the sink, washing out my brothers' bowls as they passed them over once finished. They quickly shot farewells over their shoulders and bundled out the door to begin the day's catch. They'd return in the evening reeking of fish, as would my father. We'd once again crowd around our small table; all stuffed under the low ceiling of our shell white kitchen and recount our days. They'd humour me by listening to my ramblings for sometime, but they could only hear so many stories of sea caves or about the family of gulls that lived on our roof.

I'd be wrong to say I wasn't lonely. I had a few friends at school, but they'd all grown out of their tolerance of the sea. The girls I had once invented wild stories of the imagination with were far more focused on boys and the Capitol. They liked to look at the sea, but refused to go in; something about the salt being bad for their hair. It seemed their entry into the annual Reaping had drained their innocent curiosity and the thrill of the sea from their souls; just another thing the Hunger Games had robbed us all of. It would have been nice to find a friend, a kindred spirit, but until such a creature rose from the sea, I'd have to do with chatting to the squawking cormorants.

I didn't have school that day, and suddenly the seascape outside became a large expanse of possibilities. If it weren't for the need to breathe I could quite happily float about under the waves for the rest of eternity. There's something about the weightlessness, the press of my ribs against my lungs, the ache in my legs that was exhilarating. I had long dreamed of being able to swim out the outlying islands that lay as smudges in the distance, to my own funny perspective they were the size of bread loaves upon the horizon. A boat would be needed to reach them, but ours was in use everyday and I had neither the skills nor the strength in my arms to operate one all by myself.

Though it was the year's last month, and in other districts the cold would be felt a lot more; the heat wavered only slightly. The stored warmth from yesterday radiated up from the sand as my bare feet crossed over it, as I left the shade of my home. The dry air had forced me into a shapeless cotton dress that I had long outgrown. The faded yellow pattern of little linked up buttercups exposed my grazed knees, the ripped and stained edges riding up too high up my leg for liking. It was my birth date soon and I had been promised a new dress for then, so for now I had to make do with my sparse collection of pale cotton garments. I resented the fact I still had the body of an elongated child, but at least it meant I could still fit into my dresses.

I reached the shore and relished in the sharp, refreshing cold of the foaming waves. I followed them along, trying each time to jump and avoid them, though only managing to get my dress already soaking wet. The sand soon turned to rock underfoot and I began to scale the outstretch sea cliff that formed the edge of our cove. The jutting lip extended a half-mile out and was mostly above sea level throughout the day, so it made an ideal place for me to clamber and jump off. But as I neared the end I spotted a curious sight just over the crown of the rock; a small figure hunched over and still, was examining a rock pool.

'That's one of my snares,' I shouted. I wasn't at all good at setting up traps, and so had been practicing on the small pools, trying to catch anything substantial. My feet carried me quickly over the rough rock, reaching the thief as he stood up to his full height; a whole bronze haired head taller than myself.

It was Finnick Odair. I recognized the long pinky scar on his arm that distinguished him from his brothers; he had grown since I saw him last. He was a year older than me and he loved to remind me; I knew that the curl of lips meant a smat-alec remark was just waiting to burst forth.

We used to play as children, two little bronzed babies chasing around crabs, until some silly spat between our brothers; pranks were played in a frenzy of childish warfare, but the gentle fun turned sour when fish started to be stolen from each other's crop, and eventually one of our boats was sunk. Our mothers still gossiped between market stalls, but our fathers hardly spoke. To me though they were all just basically like large children swanning around. I didn't have a problem with the Odairs as such; they were just being boys and growing up with two brothers I was used to it.

What I did have a problem with was _his_ incessant teasing.

As I walked up to him he flicked water from the rock pool at my face.

'They're freckles,' I pouted, retorting to the remark he was about to voice.

'Whatever you say Cresta.'

'What are you doing with that?' I spied a small hide bag hidden behind his back.

'What do you mean?' He was tying to feign ignorance with an overly innocent expression.

'You're stealing my fish!'

'Finder's keepers I think,' that scrawny face of him didn't even try to hide the truth.

'Really? That is such a load of smuck!' The word sounded so silly as it left my mouth, so I tried to hide my embarrassment with a faltering scowl. I did wish we could be friends again, like we were as babes, but every time I saw that haughty face of his, it really did remind me of how a smack would be so well placed on that handsome cheek of his.

'Smuck?' he snorted.

'I ran out of words,' I protested.

'Whatever,' rang out from his clever lips and I exhaled my resolve. Finnick had a face that I'd like to punch, but so many would rather swoon over. All the mothers doted over him, and always chose his stall over ours. The girls too acted like seagulls, flocking around him in the street. He was a boy with the whole port under his charm.

And a boy who had just put a fistful of sticky algae in my hair.

I squealed out as its cold gelatinous touch hit my neck and forehead. From between its slippery strings dripping down from my crown, I saw his shoulders shaking in the grasp of laughter.

'You Finnick Odair are a -' I struggled for a word '- a worm!'

'A worm?' he chuckled.

'I probably have to have it cut because of you!' I screamed.

'Look I'm sure it'll brush out!' there was the slightest tinge of panic in his voice when he realized what he had actually just done.

'It won't!' I cried.

I could feel him behind me, clawing away the gunk, though only succeeding in spreading it round more. His fingertips grazed the base of my neck sending an uncomfortable shiver down my spine, making me ask for him to stop.

'You can't just scoop it out,' I told him, my voice softer after seeing his effort. Perhaps I felt slightly guilty for shouting and squealing like a child, or that that suddenly furrowed brow of his had me worried. Twisting round to face him I pushed down his hands, coated now in the gunk he had scooped from the rock pool, with my own. They were rough with trade, callused and cracked from the sea's salty touch but still warm.

'You can stop now.'

'Okay,' his said, like a scolded child his hands, still messy, held out in a peace offering.

Over the years Finnick and I had grown apart, and yet we lived so close to each other. We interacted still, but as he was a year older we never went to school together. I'd lived through his taunts and similarly he'd ducked all the rocks I'd thrown at his head. Sadly none had found their mark and dented his ever-growing ego as intended. But this was the first time I'd seen anything other than arrogance in his eyes. It was a little startling and because the silence was awkward too, all I could do was shrug and sigh; twist round and leave with the tattered remnants of my dissolved dignity.

As I stormed home to scowl some more to my Mama, I turned round to see his still standing form grow small as I ran. The same curl passed across his lip, though this time I notice it is slightly less cruel.


	2. We Were Raindrop Young

_And so here is the second chapter. Comments and reviews are something to be cherished, and I would love to hear any suggestions or critiques you might have. _

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**II. We Were Raindrop Young**

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I wished I was a little more delicate.

My hair used to be a vital facet to this, but since my unfortunate encounter with that Odair boy a few days past, it hung just below my shoulders. I missed the tickle at the base of my spine and it's ability to trap a plethora of wild life within it. But now my sandy locks were feeble and limp, the slight curves nothing to what the waves of my hair used to be. Though it's new length might've been easier to comb, as Mama tried to reassure me in the kitchen as she lopped it off, I felt as though a piece of me was missing.

I took the blame for the mess, saying I tripped and fell into an algae pond. Finnick's hesitant glances blared out from my memory as Mama questioned me with a stern stare, but the loss of my hair was enough of a consequence for her and she pushed the matter no further. The stench still followed me around, but that only gave me an excuse to stay out in the water for much longer periods of time. My brothers though had taken it as a reason just to tease me all the more, joking that I'd scare off the shoals of mackerel they were waiting for.

Mackerel was our main stock, with the bait planted at the mouth of our cove to entice them into our nets. The Odairs rather caught crab and bass, further out to sea, though often we would spot a few blue scales amongst the red shells and know how they'd come about it.

I decided it was best I didn't stink up the house and set out to search further a field, past the site of my 'accident' with a bag packed with fish hooks, bait and line. The weather was slightly cooler; clouds had appeared over night and provided some cover from the sun. I soon reached my destination, a short walk from my home, but enough to lose sight of it. I was still in our waters, but far enough to know I wouldn't be bothered or worse, inflict anyone else with the smell of my hair.

Cat Rock as I liked to call it had two points, two ancient mounds of seaweed covered stone, with a large flat plain between the two making it so, as a child I would squint and find the resemblance between it's shape and name. It wasn't as easy as it looked to scale; only my small feet and slight width allowed me to manage its slim ridges. I reached the top and settled down to fish, tying the line around my fingertips, with the hooks skewering the bait at the other end. But before I could drop it in though, a flash of colour caught my eye.

I recognized the blue rope of an Odair net. It hung limply in the water, batted about by the small waves. It had to be Finnick's, as like me, he was the only one small enough in his family to reach this point, and I doubted any of the others would set up so blatantly in our crop.

The tickle of my jagged hair reminded me of his trick before and I set about hoisting it up, shaking the catch back out to sea and then quickly dismantling his net. It wasn't hard to do. His knots were hasty and easy to disassemble, too loose to really hold. It wasn't long before a shadow cast over my shoulder.

'You untied it!' He cried aloud, grabbing the now loose bundle of strings from my hands.

'It wasn't hard,' I hit back as he clutched at the tangle of ropes.

'Show me how you did it,' he thrust out his hand without pause to think, shaking the rope at me in some forced invitation.

'No,' I replied indignantly.

'Why not? Do it is a favour.'

'You're the one that owes me.'

'I don't,' he argued, but waving my severed locks at him silenced his protests.

'Fine perhaps I do, but still-'

'Still what Odair?' I demanded.

'Teach me, I want to learn,' his reply took me by surprise. I'd always taken him as a boy too proud to ask for anything. Though an admirable quality in some, that resilience to depend on no one but yourself; Finnick took it to the point where every idea had to be his own. Though perhaps I was wrong. Gladly so I guessed. This was a side of him I hadn't seen before and so hesitantly I took the rope from his outstretched hands.

Finnick took to relearning not as quickly as he would have perhaps liked, but he didn't give up. We spent the morning untangling the rest of the rope, with me then instructing him on the simplest method of the technique. He had it by midday, but refused to budge from his seat until he'd netted the whole thing again. I caught us a lunch of two pathetically small fish and using the tinder in his bag set up a crumbling fire.

'I didn't mean to kill your hair,' he said in a low murmur, after thanking me for the fish; a comment on how measly they were did escape his lips first though.

'It's fine,' I sighed, really wanting to move on from the whole matter.

'No really -' he caught my gaze, his sea green eyes meeting my own '- I mean it Annie,' That was the first time he'd ever used my name. I hadn't even been sure before if he had known what it was before.

'It's okay, really,' I blinked and the eye contact was lost.

'So you forgive me?'

'No! You still owe me,' I crossed my arms.

He laughed at that and just waved it off with a 'Fine.'

We spent the afternoon talking about our similar callings to the sea and his interest was sparked as I detailed all the caves and secrets coves I had found in the past. I told him too about my dream to reach the far out islands and was pleasantly surprised to find that that had been a plan of his as well.

The sun didn't last for long, and as the afternoon wore on, the bright eye nestled behind a pink froth of cloud; our little fire had reduced to nothing but cooling embers and ash blown in the wind. The head of the rock was covered in netting, yet still not all of it had been assembled. A flock of seagulls played out at sea, bobbing about on the water top like little spectral balloons.

'The birds won't be staying long. Summer's coming and they'll be flying south soon,' I commented.

'I don't like the summer,' He said suddenly. I found it odd that such a golden boy, a creature that seem so entwined with the sun and heat to say such a thing, but he gave his curt reason on seeing the curiosity in my face.

'The Reaping's coming.'

'You don't have to worry about that. Your name's only been in twice.'

'I know but-' he seemed to chew his words before '-I feel like I'm drowning. Like it's just waiting to happen; that it's _going_ to happen. And that everything I do now is just futile.'

'Life is futile, so you have to fill it with people and other occupations.'

'I train I guess,' he shrugged. I'd never realized that the Games had plagued his mind so much before, though to be honest it terrorized all of us; you'd have to be emotionally defunct or in denial, as I guess I was, to escape it's grasp.

'That's illegal is it not?'

'It's better than getting killed.' He was right. The fear of the Reaping was enough to send scores of young boys and girl jogging out along the beach at the crack of dawn, wall manner of wooden weapons in hand.

'I want to have some dignity.'

'Don't we all?'

'Not many do when they die.'

'I'd be really annoyed if you did.'

'Annoyed?'

'Yeah, because I would know that you wouldn't just roll over and take it. If it ever came to that.'

'You don't know me, not really.'

'No,' I exhaled 'I don't think I do,' I guess I really didn't. We had lived in such proximity for so many years, yet I only knew the sparsest of details about him; only what lay on Finnick's tanned surface.

We lapsed into silence then, neither knowing quite how to entice new conversation. So we sat there, both swinging our legs in time, watching the sky turn steadily from a hazy periwinkle into a deep blush pink. The sun and its lash thick clouds seemed to engulf the sky, drawing in the colours of the day like a plug hole, the night's inky hush bleeding in from the east. He carried on tying the rope with serious concentration, focusing on his self-made task, rather than looking to the sky as I did. It was only when his stomach growled with hunger did he rise, shaking the numbness from his limbs.

'I'll be off then.' He passed back the half finished net, his hand brushing mine briefly.

'Do you want to come back tomorrow? You haven't finished the net, and I could help you carry on,' the words surprise me as they left my mouth and it seemed to have a similar effect on Finnick, though he was quick to dispel the frown, his face breaking out into a wide smile.

'I'd like that Cresta,' and with a flick of his hand, he jumped from the rock and began to sprint out across the beach. I watched him run home, the sand kicking up in the air as he went, his hair wild with the wind, as the sea washed away his foot prints until there was no evidence he'd every been there apart from the few knotted ropes beside me. I watched him until the small dot of his figure disappeared over the sand dune into the next cove. The touch of his hand still lingered leaving me feeling oddly alone, at the thought of losing his presence. I sat there watching the sun fully submerge into the sea, his farewell lingering in my ears, '_Cresta'._ I liked strangely how to syllables of my name had sounded in his mouth.

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The days past by slowly on that rock. Finnick returned as he had promised, bringing scraps of old rope to practice with. I taught him how to angle his hands and what to do with the rope and net to avoid becoming tangled. Finnick soon no longer needed my assistance and was steadily becoming extremely deft at net making. The look of deep concentration that creased his forehead loosened and was replaced by a grin, as his hand grew used to twisting and knotting. Soon his speed was formidable and he was making nets from not just rope but seaweed too; anything he could get his hands on. On completion of his first net, I rewarded him with a small length of my father's rope, stained Cresta red; so that he could practice his knotting. It was small and insignificant to me, but warmly received with a surprisingly enthusiastic hug from Finnick, and though I brushed it off, it would become the first of many future gifts that would be passed between us.

My birth date came quickly, marking my thirteenth summer alive in the cove. I felt the age in my bones, and morbid wonderings began to slip into my mind about how much longer I would have. Finnick was right, the Reaping was coming and luck only lasted so long.

I rose that morning with a curious sense of trepidation. I had always woken each day with a similar feeling of the unknown, but that had always filled me with excitement. Under the washed out blue sheets I felt contained. Not yet ready to burst out into the world, another year older, another year gone from my lifespan. I finally did rise, repeating my usual morning routine, pretending that unlike my years of experience before, this day was of no significance. In years before I'd wake to find perhaps a set of shells at the bottom of my bed, or even if that year had been particularly good to us, a new dress. When I looked down, the cloth covering my feet was empty and I found my curiosity enticed. Though I must admit a rather larger part of me had wished they'd forgotten all together; the smell of fresh bread coming in through my door convinced me otherwise.

I entered the kitchen with some hesitation. It had taken sometime for me to shake the sleep from me eyes and put on my clothes, having pulled my dress on backwards several times before. My families warm faces looked up at me, flashes of amusement at the ridiculous shapes my untamed bed hair had formed. Upon the table lay a small square of folded cloth and a fish shaped loaf, which I knew my father must have saved for. The smell was delicious and so Mama helped me cut five slices and pass them around the table. My brothers' devoured their's in seconds and after they had both planted a kiss on either cheek and wishing me to have a good time, shuffled out to begin the day's haul. My father left after them in a similar fashion, but he lingered to give Mama a kiss as well.

I carefully unfolded the cloth, savouring the quakes of curiosity in my stomach. Presents were such a rare thing in our district; I supposed in all, and so in my mind they were always something to be treasured. From people to have so little; luxuries like this, however small, were deeply significant.

Thirteen small ribbons, all in varying shades of the sea lay nestled in the cloth.

'For you hair,' Mama cooed softly, planting a kiss on my forehead.

'You had mentioned how uncomfortable you felt with your new cut, and I thought this might help,' I felt suddenly self-conscious; had I really harked on about it that much?

I thanked her copiously, rapping my arms around her warm middle, breathing in the scent fresh linen and soap. She then helped me select a light green; the colour of the spring tides over moss; to match my eyes and plaited it into my hair.

I rushed back upstairs to hide my precious new gift under my pillow, for later when I could examine them closer. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the little mirror; liking for once how the colouring of my face, my golden hair and lightly tanned skin made my sea green eyes stand out. My locks had once been an angelic white blonde, like many of the children in our district, but if I was to follow as my brothers had before me, my hair would soon begin to take on a darker shade.

I called out to Mama and then ran out of the house at full speed, enjoying how the fresh winds made the little plait in my hair fly about. With lungs filled to the brim with salty sea air, I pelted up the rock face like a wild cat.

I was surprised to find Finnick up on Cat Rock, though no nets were in sight.

'Hello,' I called out brightly, glad to see him as his head turned round to greet me with that smile. He rose and I was surprised for the second time when he hugged me in a tight embrace. Finnick Odair, to my shock, was a hugger.

He stuffed a small bundle in my hand and unfurling it I found myself looking down upon a square of neatly made netting, with bits of shell entwined in the mesh. It was a light grey colour and meticulously made. The soft curls of creamy shells and tiny red pincers of baby crabs were sewn delicately into the net. It had no know apparent pattern, just purely a plethora of textures, a tangible essence of the sea.

'I've been spoilt today,' I murmured under my breath and looked up to see Finnick's expectant face.

'I love it. Thank you,' he took that as an invitation, as suddenly he wrapt his arms around my shoulders in another quick and awkward hug.

'Now does this make us even?' he asked as he released me.

'No way,' I snorted.

'How long are you going to keep me like this?'

'Forever Odair. I've got you under my spell,' I crossed my arms smirking.

'You certainly have,' he replied to my surprise.

I didn't quite know how to answer that, so I chortled as loudly as possible, and he joined me, until really we were laughing for no other reason than to see the happiness of the other. A glint in his eye told me, without the need for words, exactly what he was thinking. He gave me enough time to carefully stow away his gift and my ribbon in a small hollow, before we'd both leapt off the rock and were basking in the warm depths of the open sea.

We often spent our days like that; racing each other in the water, making a mess of our clothes as we challenged each other at who could make the largest mound of sand or who was brave enough to go furthest into the dank caves. I began to recognize features of his personality that before had been hidden to me. The glint in his eye when he jumped about the rocks in hunt for even the smallest of fishes. How I had been mistaken before it believing him so hot-headed as his brothers. No matter how much I teased and poked fun at him he never angered. He was like a dormant sea, still and constant, the flow of waves always steady, always to be relied on.

And that's what shocked me most. How dependent I was becoming on him. I found my days empty when he was out on his boats; my school days spent devising up new routes and coves we could explore. To read something in a the sparse supply of books our library held, was no longer to only be cherished by myself, but shared with him too. I'd delight at the rapt attention he held me in, the moments of eye contact we shared, and I was happy with him, as hard as it was to admit to myself. He was like a kind of brother I had never had, a friend, a companion finally of my own age who shared my awe of the sea and addiction to its crystal waters.

A friendship slowly brewed between us under the still ongoing pretense that he owed me. Soon the question of 'does this make it up to you?' was absent from our conversation and he would help me without the need for it to be a ways to get out of our contract. He brought me crab shells from his own family's stock, the pink meat having been already sold at their stall. And in return I showed him all my hiding places, the warrens I had found in the sand banks and the host of cormorants and their downy chicks.

My hair soon began to grow again and just as I became used to its drastically shorter length, I was beginning to get used to his company also. He radiated warmth, not just in the sense of comfort, but also in that his skin, golden from the sun's touch had absorbed it's ray and now expelled them out. I could feel his presence as it approached me and how cold the air became when he left. Our arms would bash and our shoulders touch in play and I could feel the press of heat from his tanned skin, the touch of the golden downy hair, each alive like a wire.

To be so young and filled with such vitality amazed me. Finnick Odair truly amazed me; I still was in shock at the character change I was observing, the growing boy who was emerging before my eyes, drawn forth by our friendship out from the skin of that teasing child I had thought him to be. He would still tug at my hair, but not to cause me annoyance, but to grab my attention. I would spin round to meet that curled grin, the half smile that he reserved, I found, just for me.

And so with the change from the winter months, into the dawn of spring, he was no longer just Odair in my mind.

He was Finnick.

Finnick_, _the boy I now knew to be my best friend.


	3. I'll Change My Mind

_Once again, I would really appreciate any comments or critiques you might have, they're all absolutely gorgeous to me. _

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**III. I'll Change My Mind**

.

It had been four months since the algae incident, and my hair had grown a despairingly short amount. It tickled me about the armpits, but at least it began to dance in the wind again.

Days were spent traipsing about the rock together, finding new secret coves and sea caves. It was lucky I had Finnick, and though I didn't want to admit it, I was hopelessly clumsy. I had grown two inches rapidly in only a couple of months and the sudden height had made me unsure about my footing. I was suited to swimming, but still I missed being able to scale the rocks so easily. I would often slip on an unseen piece of seaweed and only Finnick's arm would keep me from crashing down completely. He found it continually funny, his amusement at my bad footing never ending. He'd burst out with laughter at my shocked face and make a light-hearted comment like,

_'You really are a sea creature aren't you?'_

_'What do you mean?'_

_'You can hardly walk, look at you, flippers for feet!'_

I liked to watch the storm of expressions pass by upon his unmarred forehead. As he grew he was becoming very handsome, something I couldn't deny, but I felt no need to notice. What good would it do; to swoon over him like all the other girls? It wasn't in an act to separate me from them, but I felt he rather needed my friendship than my adoration. He was as lonely as I was, having already left school, his life panned out as predictably as my own. He would work on his father's boat until age clutched at his bones, and until then he would occupy himself with a wife and perhaps children, his life dedicated to feeding the Capitol's bellies with shoals of fish.

That would be if he escaped the Reaping once more, but his words from earlier rang out about my ears. His fear was one we shared, but one that hadn't quite sunk in yet for me. This would only be my second year in the entry and I was still enveloped by my pre-pubescence bubble of ignorance. The year before a boy Finnick had been friendly with had been chosen, a boy my own age; whose brutal death left a twin brother behind and a weeping mother. I hadn't seen her leave her house in the quay since. Finnick still held the sight of his death in the small crinkles about his eyes, which came to life, as he would squint against the blaring sun. How could someone look so young and yet so old at the same time?

I liked to look at his face not for its beauty but for the complexity I was uncovering as each day passed. The concentration on his brow as he worked on his nets, the flint spark in his eyes as he demonstrated to me; in return for my own teachings, his prowess at spearing fish. He was a formidable foe when wielding the shaft of a harpoon, sending it down into the frothy waters with such accuracy you would have sworn the waves were as clear as glass. But his face would always look up from his kill with a half smile or a cocked eyebrow at catching my often-awed face. He'd laugh at that, and I was glad to find as the days went past it was no longer at me, but with me.

I felt as though I'd revealed something really quite special in Finnick, a newfound pleasant breeze that rustled through my consciousness; I had found a kindred spirit. We were like two halves of a whole and steadily became inseparable.

.

The year's third month rolled in, bringing a tide of change. We began the preparations for the first quarter haul; this being the month in which the mackerel were driven close to the shore before they would disperse to spawn in the later months; so it would be the last chance we might have to catch a shoal for quite some time.

The fish though, never came.

Ini went out early in the morning to inspect the catch as we all basked in spring sun filtering in from the window. We chatted lightly about the day's events, how that night we'd plan the next few months ration of food and touching on subjects like the upcoming summer. I was long used to a diet of very little; my excelling growth owed to Mama's resilience to feed her family, no matter how inventive her meals might be. Being from District 4, we didn't suffer as much as perhaps the lower districts did. I had learnt about them in my lessons, pouring over large maps as a child, committing to memory their produce and terrain, yet had never stepped foot further than the valley our seaport lay in. If we lived purely on the wages from the Capitol we'd starve, but our market stall earned a humble amount and my mother's laundry round as well as my brothers doing the odd manual labour. I was always fed and clothed; however sparingly. Yet that of course relied on the mackerel.

Ini burst into the house in a whirl of rage.

'Yesterday's catch is gone. The damn mackerel's not there!' he shook the remnants of red rope in his fist at us, his knuckles bone white.

'The net must have broken!' he shouted. It was my family's practise to keep the fish in the water over night. The net was a tight mesh, so none could escape. We'd tow them inshore and tie them to the rock and gut them in the morning, so they were as fresh as possible for the next day at the market. No seals lived near by, nor sharks, so the fish couldn't get loose unless someone had purposely freed them. Thom shot up from the table and slipped out from the door in his brother's wake, no doubt wanting to confirm it with his own eyes. I could see Ini readying to burst, his cheeks a furious red, matching the hacked net in his hands.

My father rose silently. I was anticipating the harpoons to be shouldered and the three of them, me undoubtedly in tow would go out on a rampage, searching the sea until it boiled. But instead, my father clapped Ini on the shoulder and told him not to worry.

I blinked. That was a resolution I hadn't anticipated.

I could see that Ini still wasn't appeased, but my father's firm hand and stoic glare calmed the brewing storm in his heaving chest. My father assured us that it was only the beginning of the season and that there was plenty more fish to catch. Thom returned, confirming Ini's find, but calmly suggested we head out to the market early, to increase our chances of softening the blow to our income. A perfectly pleasant morning had been soiled by such misfortune, but as me and my brothers set out to the seaport, weighted down with stock, I promised that we would reclaim the day.

.

The market place was swelling with people. We had set up our stall early in the morning, claiming a spot not far from the Odair's own stall across the forum. As the stream of people passed through, Peacekeepers would approach us and question our stock, check the wavers documenting our fulfilled quota of Capitol fish and checking there was nothing of too high a quality for our own district's purchase. We were acquainted with a few; some were open to further conversation and even to their own trade, buying the large fish we kept behind the stall.

The smells were acrid and encompassing, but years of being by the sea meant my stomach no longer quavered at the stench. We did a good amount of trade, the square coins of our district appearing between finger and thumb of grazing customers. The morning's loss of mackerel did some damage though, with many expecting it's presence.

'I'm going to go see what's happening at the Odair's,' Ini excused himself, noticing the larger crowd that had slowly formed across the way from us. Thom gave me a knowing twitch of his brow and followed after him. As my brothers left I saw the tall shape of the youngest Odair boy casually waltz towards me. Finnick came behind the stall and plopped himself onto Ini's vacated stool, swinging his legs about in that pubescent arrogance that I saw often infect his face.

'What are you doing here Odair?' I huffed with exasperation.

'Such a cold reception Cresta!' He pulled a face of mock appal.

'Don't give me that look,' I shook my head, trying to suppress a giggle.

'What look?' I turned round and he was pouting at me. I couldn't hold it in any longer, and laughed out into the hot market air.

'See I made you laugh.'

'Fine you did. But seriously what do you want?'

'I've come on a mission,' there was a playful glint in his young eyes, which I knew could only mean trouble.

'What is it?'

'Could you tell me what date it might be this time next week?' he asked with a curl of his lip.

'The 16th-' I sighed with understanding '- your birth date.'

'Fourteen is an important milestone; being so much older and wiser I would know this,' he informed me with mock haughtiness. Well with Finnick it might not be so mock.

'I have something planned. So meet me then, next week, after your supper on the gull's rock.'

'What for-' I was cut off as loud voices drew my attention from Finnick's face. Across at the Odair's stall the crowd had parted. Ini was in the midst of a heated argument with Finnick's own brother Kel.

Without a further word we both rose and crossed the forum. I passed Nils Crane, the unfortunate twin, as I made a beeline through the crowd, and with the promise of our largest fish, he agreed to watch the stall. By the time Finnick and I had made it to our brothers things had become physical, with the usual displays of masculinity; the bashing of chests and first jabs at landing a blow.

'You can stop Ini,' I pushed him lightly on the arm, in a feebly attempt to disperse the tension I could see building in his shoulders. Ini had a fierce temper, and like a kettle was quick to boil and overflow if not attended to. As a child his moods would swing like a pendulum, sparked off by Thom's play fighting or my own light fingers with his shell collection, with only Mama being able to wipe away the red fury building in his cheeks.

Thom's own hand joined mine in restraint 'Ini let it go.'

'I won't! He's a damn thief! He took our mackerel!'

Finnick stood almost as tall as Ini, though still a head shorter than Kel. Both boys were near identical apart from the fierce scowl across Kel's crown. In a blink the boys were rolling about on the floor, dust being kicked up. Like two scrapping tomcats they twisted and writhed about, both trying to land a blow or a scrape. Thul and Thom dived in trying to try and drive them apart, Finnick trying to grab at his brother's flying limbs. Foolishly I tried to put my own weight into the fight but was instantly thrown back as an elbow lashed out from the brawl and hit me full on the face.

I have to admit to a shockingly low resistance to pain, but the blow really did feel as though it might have cracked my skull. Like a paper doll I was knocked backward, sprawling comically across the floor. My eyes were both tightly shut and my head was spinning. The cascade of shouts and squeals coming from the boys ricocheted about my skull as my hearing seemed to dribble out from my ears, transforming into the squalls of seagulls. Disorientation set in and to my blurry mind staying down seems like the best possible answer.

Two hands grasped me about the armpits and dragged me back, and only was it the feeling of weightlessness did I realize that I had been picked up.

'Thanks Thom,' I slurred, feeling what I thought to be my brother's arms holding me up about my shoulders and under the crook of my knees.

'You welcome,' came back a shaky chuckle, which sounded oddly familiar, but still so very different from the voice I was used to hear.

I cracked open my right eye, the other already swollen shut and weeping furiously. The hazy underside of a bronzed face wavered above me and only did I realize it was Finnick when he glanced down with what looked like a touch of concern. Perhaps it was the building threat of a concussion and that my vision was going, but there was worry in those sea-green eyes. My mind consumed them, and the colours of his eyes began to bleed out into the sky, my conscious already swimming in it. I was really quite definitely concussed.

He set me down when I began to squirm, the feeling of being lifted off the ground too odd, as well as my resistant to be seen as so weak. Finnick didn't need to rescue me, and I wished he hadn't. Still that didn't stop him from cradling my face and inspecting my eye. His hands, though warm, made the swelling twinge.

'That is going to be quite a sight in the morning,' he grinned, trying to dispel the worry mounting in his voice.

'Is it bad?' From my impaired vision and radiating throb from my socket, I already knew.

'You got hit in the eye. It's swollen pretty badly, but should fade to a bruise. I'll get you something cold in a bit.'

'Thank you,' I said meekly. His hand was the only thing keeping me upright.

'Do you feel okay? Queezy?' from what I could see from my working eye his face was closer than I had thought, inspecting me.

'A little,' I groaned. He moved back at that, his hand leaving my face. I strangely missed its comfort.

'Well don't chuck up on me,' gone was the concern, and old Finnick surfaced once again.

'I'll tell you if I am,' I decided to close my eye again; the glare from the midday sun was sparking off a deep pain behind my eyebrows.

I heard him exhale, 'What am I going to do with you?'

'Not let me get hit again? Perhaps? Maybe?'

'I wasn't my fault your eye got in the way!'

'Too curious for its own good,' I laughed.

'It would seem so,' I felt him stand from crouching before me, and with his hands, guided me up as well.

'What are you doing?' I questioned with alarm.

'I just need to carry you home Annie. I can't guide you through the streets like you're blind, we'd probably wouldn't make it back before nightfall.'

'Fine,' I relented and stretched my arms out in expectation to be led. I felt the curve of his spine, and slowly laced my arms about his neck, letting him hoist me up onto his back. I hadn't been carried like this since I was a child, but as he started to walk my resistance to it slowly began to wane. I wrapped my legs about his waist to help him carry my weight, and tightened my arms. With that he let out a mock strangle.

'Don't choke me Annie, I'm only trying to help!' he chuckled.

'Sorry, I can't see a thing. How do I know you are leading me off a cliff?'

'You just have to trust me.'

'As if!' I let out in a tone that I hadn't meant to be so hard. Finnick just laughed it off, and squeezed my legs with his palms.

'I'm hurt Cresta!'

'So am I,' I quipped. It felt like we had been walking for quite some time and the steady rhythm of his pace lulled my chin onto the crook of his neck.

'You okay there?' he asked sounding surprised. I could feel the vibrations of his voice, maturing in its depth, radiate through my chin.

'Just peachy. No really, a lot better thank you. Well apart from the blindness I suppose.' His laughter shook through me and I began to laugh too.

'That'll go when you get some cold meat on it.' That ended our conversation and we lapsed into a comfortable silence, the two of us listening to the other's breathing, slowly synchronizing. He occasionally asked me questions to check if I was awake, or comment on our changing surrounding, telling me which street we were on and when we eventually left the paved alleys of the seaport. The sun was hot on my back, but a breeze from the sea, cool and moist kept me from baking. The usual half hour walk stretched out from what felt much longer, but eventually my nose picked up the distinct smell of the sea grass on the sand banks about my cottage and the slow melodic hum that emanated from my Mama. When the tune stopped I knew we'd been spotted.

'Annie!' Came a female cry and I felt Finnick's shoulders tense beneath me. 'What happened?' she gasped.

'A fight between our brothers at the market,' he tried his best to explain 'She got between then and took a stray punch to the face.'

I loosened my arm and began to twist in his grasp. He let go of the undersides of my thighs in response and helped me awkwardly untangle myself from around him. It was like I had forgotten how to walk, and like a baby my knees curled and threaten to buckle, until I felt his grasp once again about my waist.

'It's okay Mama,' I protested as her worn hands probed about my face, wiping away the stream of tears from my injured eye.

'We'll get something cold for that,' she said and I could feel the transfer of hands, as Finnick's grasp loosened, and my Mama took my weight.

'Thank you Finnick' I spoke aloud, not sure where he was as I was led inside.

He didn't reply, but I felt almost the sense of a smile, the curl of his lip as he watched my stagger shakily into the threshold.


	4. You Can Chase Me Through The Rain

_I'm beginning to inject the first swirls of romance, so the momentum will begin to pick up; soon their days of innocence will be all flushed away. _

_Thankyou all so much for your reviews so far, and also for how generous you've all been with alerts and favorites, my goodness! _

_I saw the Hunger Games again today, like the loser I am, only for it to make my girl crush on Jennifer Lawrence go wild. I think I'm the only person upon this earth who believes Finnick should be played by Alexander Skarsgård, purely for how cute Eric is in True blood. _

_Your comments and reviews make my world spin, so please don't hesitate to send me any of your thoughts or feedback. _

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**IV. You Can Chase Me Through The Rain**

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He was right. My eye was horrific. When I woke that morning the pain had only loosened slightly. I had to ready myself before glancing in the mirror; as my face had taken on the complexion of a corpse. The swelling had yet to recede, both my eyelid and under eye were still enlarged and tender. The blood had poured out into the soft tissue around my eye, and like ink in water, a dark plume of purple had swept about my face. It was strange looking out, as the left side of my sight, the usually fuzz of my peripheral vision had gained a dark outline. Just as I could see my eyelashes faintly in my sight, I could also see the barest hints of the swelling. Yet that was only a minor impediment in comparison to the pain. Every time I blinked the memory was refreshed, and as my eyelids made contact a tinge of the initial impact retuned to me; the queasy feeling and disorientation, as well as the faint ghost of a palm, gently against my cheek.

I braved the world outside my room, and was greeted with cackles from the two boys when I found them down by the shore.

Ini had managed to escape with barely a scratch on him, just a few grazes about his forehead and chin, not doubt from the ground rather than his adversary. Thom on the other hand had been dealt a split lip and a smattering of bruises, though not as deep in colour as my own, about his worn face. Whilst they might have laughed me, I was far more interested in the origin of Thom's injuries, rather than just mocking him. That would come later.

'They came from Ini here actually,' Thom took a playful swipe at his younger brother, knocking him about the chin lightly as Ini ducked and swerved in good nature.

'What do mean?' I asked astonished. What had happened whilst I was off in the swirling realms of disorientation?

'I tried to split the boys apart, it took both me and Thul and some of the crowd. I had to shoulder Ini, to stop him, but he kicked me in the face.'

'By accident,' Ini looked sheepish, especially as he had got away with so little superficial damage.

'Yeah yeah,' Thom countered. I was glad he possessed a much calmer nature that Ini. Hardly anything stirred Thom's temper; never in my thirteen years of knowing him had I seen him anger. It seemed Ini had sapped all of it from him, whilst Thom had taken all his younger brother's common sense.

.

I was glad to see the bruise begin to recede on the third day. As the blood was reabsorbed slowly, it left a sickly yellow tidemark. As the days passed new colours blossomed about my eyes, little pinpricks of red, smudges of green. The pain at least had drained away, so the only thing I was left with was that stubborn bruise. Finnick almost fell over laughing when he saw me, something I really did not appreciate. His cackles only exacerbated my self-consciousness, and quite a few times I jumped out at him, hoping that I might succeed in giving him a similar shiner. Alas my badly aimed punches never inflicted anything upon that clean skin of his.

The bruise showed no sign of budging from between my freckles and slowly I began to accept that unwanted visitor upon my face. By the next week the swelling had gone down completely, and so I left my home that night forgetting about my face.

I met him by the rocks as he had requested after my fill of my mother's sea-bone broth. The air was warm enough to go without cover, and I was glad to be outside without fear of burning my bare shoulders. The sand was still hot from soaking up the young rays, and was a comfort underfoot, as I went out without shoes. That was one of the things I liked most about our district. Shoes were a rare sight, only reserved for moments of celebration or for the elderly. About the market place you would see the many variations of our distinct tan, traipse and travel about the cobbled floor. Sand was everywhere, stored up between toes to be sown about the seaport like the seeding of some monstrous crop.

He was to be found out on the lip, grinning like a mad man. His delight was soon revealed, as I looked down off the edge to find a small boat lightly rocking on the waves.

'It's my father's extra boat. He lent to me for my birth date,' he exclaimed with such enthusiasm, hopping deftly into its wooden belly. He held out a hand and asked:

'Are you coming?' his hand was still extended and so I placed my own on his, grasping at his fingers as he helped me down into the boat.

'Where are we going?' he had definitely peaked my interest and my curiosity probably wouldn't tolerate much more mystery. He pointed out to sea, his finger jabbing at the mounds that I had so often dreamed of; the islands.

'Will we get there before dark?' Our district was lucky in its longitude; from the peeling maps of Panem I had seen before I knew that we were furthest south. As a result our days were long, and I often fell asleep whilst it was still light out and similarly would wake, my eyes already bright.

'Sure. And I packed blankets and breakfast so we can stay overnight and come back in the morning. It's an adventure!' his enthusiasm was infectious. Thoughts of savages and unknown sea monsters; stories of sirens that would suck out your soul through your nostrils and poisonous night creatures flashed across my mind, but that smile quelled all worry. I didn't even think of what would happen if we were caught; the horrific punishment that would be slashed about our wrists and backs if we were discovered by the Peacekeepers. But I soon found that any fears I had were left behind on the shore, and together we pushed off, with Finnick taking to the oars as I worked the rudder.

For a boy, newly anointed fourteen, he was strong; a life spent fishing had put strength in his young arms and we made quick progress. The weather seemed to be celebrating his birth date too; the water was soft, and a heavy breeze carried us out further to sea. We passed the time with mindless chatter, me mostly asking questions about how his day was; _pleasant_, did he receive any gifts; _a wooden trident_, carved by both brothers. He had brought it along, keen to already start putting those three barbed prongs to use.

We reached the island before dark as he had predicted, and were sure to drag the small boat up the beach, not knowing where the islands tides might be in the morning. Whilst it was still light we abandoned any extra baggage (though his precious trident stayed firmly in his grasp) and trekked off into the forest. The island was larger than I had expected; a tall peak, the shape of a puffin's beak, wrapped in a dense green cover. Like a blanket the forest descended from its lofty heights and sprawled out about the island floor, tendrils of trees still reaching across the course sand beach.

The forest was luxuriously deep, a soft velvety darkness encasing the humus covered floor. The trees were taller than any I had ever seen before, but all were of a bleached bark, as though the colour had been drained from their roots. This island was so distant to the life I knew back on the shore. Our land was hot and dry, the air like sand, catching in your throat and leaving your thirsty for the sea. The colours of my world were washed out greens and the speckled blue of tiny eggs. This land was new and held a vibrancy I had never known. Back home my walls were white and peeling and the smell of rust and salt sprung in my nose. Here the night was alive with colours and tiny specks of winged insects, alight like they were on fire. The air was humid, like a swamp, the ground underfoot, moist and springy like moss after rainfall. String of vines hung from the branches like adorned candelabras, the light of a thousand stars blown across the inky swathes of silky night, like many tiny flickering flames. They shone out against the navy sky, their dark green leaves, as soft as silk-screening our eye from the stars. I pointed out the Finnick their presence and we immediately turned round, wanting to be on the white beach to see them in their full glory.

He knew all their names, and with a pointed finger, together we traced through the shapes of the constellations. Some things had never changed and their names had remained as old as the stars themselves. Though Finnick did not know the reasoning behind the names, he still addressed they with a polite familiarity, as though they were old friends, those who would guide him out in the dark. They were companions of his from before birth, they were still the same from hundreds of years ago; they were all that remained of the civilizations before the dark days, a thousand lifetimes over ago. With a rapt fascination he drew me in closer to their swirling depths and taught me more about the Hydra and Andromeda, names that conjured up the images of fearsome gods within my mind. He was a boy, a man almost, filled with the vitality of the sun, and yet he was consumed by what appeared when that hot eye closed to slumber; it's sleep weeping out to bath the earth in inky pearls. He was a night-time ghost, we both were; my face reflecting the milky pallor of the moon's half filled grace.

We lay upon the beach, the course sand our bed, feeling the island's strange familiarity envelop us. Here we were ageless, here we were free. This island was what we had all dreamed of, a place free of the fear of Reaping, the fear of the games that played with our morality. Here we were not children, nor adults, the duties of age and the transition we were both experiencing no longer mattered.

I was a girl and he was a boy, nothing less, and with a faint twinge of my heart, nothing more.

We had breathed a small fire into life, dug into a shallow pit; its warmth enough to keep us from needing bedding. We lay beside each other, his bare arm pressed up against mine, our elbows bashing together. We laughed and cackled out into the air, thinking up terrorsome stories about ghouls and the souls of the dark days. We then started calling out to the stars, suddenly the fear of the upcoming Reaping leaking out in a unanimous union. I could feel the tension in his body beside me as he howled out to the crescent moon.

'We won't let them haunt us Finnick,' I turned my head over, so as to stare at the side of his face. The firelight danced upon his cheeks, glimmering softly in the reflection of his eyes as they searched round for mine.

'Promise me that Annie,' he asked.

'I promise,' I stared directly into his eyes, willing with every morsel of my being for it to be a truth.

'I defy you stars!' Finnick called out finally, his breath becoming shaky and full.

Once I felt him fall silent and his breathing grow even once again, I whispered out into the air, 'Happy birth date Finnick.'

He didn't reply, but instead slipped his hand into mine, liking the way that our rough hands matched each other's perfectly. And with my hand encased in his, I slowly drifted off to sleep, the stars being the only witness to our mismatched companionship.

.

I woke to a myriad of screams.

The forest was alive with birdcall, more majestic than I could have ever imagined. Sharp squawks and delicate trills blared out in a cacophony of noise. Finnick in true form still slept, his heavy form splayed out across the floor refusing to be roused. I sat up, absorbing the air around me as I tried to pull away the cover of sleep that still dragged at my mind. It took quite some time to wake Finnick, eventually ending up with me poking him in the neck with the blunt end of his trident.

With the light of day we decided to renter the forest. It had taken on a transformation from the night before. Silent flowers played about in the breeze, in large plumes, hanging off vines wrapped around those still bleached trees. They were like bone, sprouting out from the ground, their tops splintering off into differing branches. A blush of colours, corals and deep azures, like none we had seen before lay about like a plush covering, adorning all possible ledges, as though still in celebration of Finnick's age. The inclination of slope rose and we found our selves climbing ever higher towards the rock face of the island's small mountain.

We found a thin trail, taking care to tread carefully, as on one side the hill cut away, leaving a ragged decline back down to the beach, coated in the undergrowth. Eventually we hit the cliff face and found the large gaping mouth of an inland cave. Its roof was cavernous as Finnick and I tentatively entered, our voiced amazement echoing about its walls. Stalactites and stalagmites were like sharp teeth lining the caves jaws, and from above water trickled down in little streams. The air inside was saturated, like a hot soup. The light from outside shed a little illumination in the cave, enough for us both the see the large pools inside. We both wandered further in, excited to find somewhere to explore underwater. The pools were filled with clear, glassy water, allowing us to see with the little daylight, the bottom of their depths. The waters looked cool and refreshing, and ever so enticing. What would it be like to swim within the earth?

'We could explore further,' Finnick suggested. He was trying to act passive but I could see the shared glint in his eye that desired to go deeper into the pools. Something about them made me uneasy, perhaps the fact that our whereabouts was unknown to the greater world.

'We've left our camp all the way back at the beach, wouldn't it be better to get it first and make sure we know the definite way back?' I reasoned.

'I guess so,' Finnick pouted and I knew he was only persuaded by the promise of return.

As we left the caves the midday sun met us. It had risen higher in the sky since we had seen it last and was blinding. The overhead leaves gave some coverage, creating large shadows across the floor with their leafy palms. The shadows swayed and collected about the place, a plethora of different shapes. I was watching the forest floor more than what was before me. Upon the ground I suddenly spied something of intrigue. By the edge of hill, just before its descent began, a small stone lay nestled amongst the fallen leaves.

It was small and white, soft and smooth like bone. It was speckled with little bits of black and blue, like the egg of some small finch. Yet the most curious quality was the perfect hole in it's centre. It was like a band of rock, a ring almost, with large enough gap for me to see clearly through. My mother had told me once that mermaids both inhabited the sea and the land, falling in love with seafaring folk and trading their adoration for a pair of legs. From years of gnawing on shells, their teeth would be hollow and painful but from between them they would whistle out their enticing tune. Once ashore they would scatter their teeth and grow new ones, allowing them to converse with their love. The stone was like enamel and pearly enough to believe it had some significance. I bent to pick it up, relishing at its silken surface, holding it up for Finnick to admire.

I shifted my weight to rise once again, but as I did so, something moved below me.

The ground beneath me gave way and I felt my body plunge. There was a tug about the neck of my dress, as Finnick wildly grasped out, and together in a tangle of limbs, we cascaded down the hill. I felt as though we were falling forever, sharp branches and prickly leaves scraping our faces and exposed skin, a thick crust of mud pushing into our eyes and mouth with each rotation. We tumbled down the last of the hill, the angle suddenly changing, as we found our selves falling off an over hanging ledge.

We hit the dense forest floor with a thud. A sickening snap ricocheted about in the unstill air.

I had fallen onto Finnick, my face pressed painfully against his chest. I could feel his heart thudding against his ribcage, and only once I felt it begin to slow, did I start to untangle myself from the mess of limbs.

'Are you okay?' he asked as I groaned, picking myself off him, with two shaky arms.

'I'm fine, you broken my fall -'

The carnage beneath my feet suddenly became apparent.

Between us his trident lay in two splintered pieces.

He was quick to get up, his hands suddenly balled into fists; his knuckles bone white, as his face contorted in rage. His jaw tensed and I could feel the grind of his teeth as his eyes swept over the two halves.

'What do you do Annie,' he hissed out from gritted teeth. It was an accusation rather than a question.

'Finnick-'

'What did you do Annie,' he repeated slowly.

'It's wasn't just me.'

'This is all your fault!' He was really shouting at me now.

'But Finn-' I protested.

'I don't want to hear it!' and with that he stormed off in the direction of the sea. I had no other option but to follow him as he tore through the forest.

The boat ride back was uncomfortable. Neither of us spoke, the soft lapping noises of the waves and the far off squalling of the gulls filling the space where our conversation had once been. The sea was choppy and unfriendly, a mass of grey clouds approaching us as we steered towards land. As we got closer to shore, the light patter of rain, the first fall of the year, hit my face. The spray of sea water drenched my outer layers of clothing, but Finnick made no attempt the ease up the force in which he plunged the oars into the sea. The old Finnick was surfacing; the stubborn child who pouted and stamped his foot when he didn't get his way. After an antagonizing wait, with me watching his face and it's mix of emotions and him furiously trying to avoid my gaze, we eventually made it to the beach.

'Finnick can you just talk to me?' I pleaded, watching the back of his head as he began to race across the beach. I tried to grapple at his arm to grab his attention, with him suddenly whipping round to face me.

'What do _you _want?'

'I want to understand why you're so mad!"

'Why I'm so mad?'

'It was a mistake, and both of us fell.'

'It was you and that silly rock and you and your stupid clumsy feet!'

'Don't call me stupid!' I shouted back, the wind picked up and carrying our voices out to sea.

He stopped for a moment, glancing down, looking somewhat ashamed before glancing back down at the broken wood in his hand. His face contorted and his chin rose to once against meet my gaze.

'You just ruined the best thing I ever had!' he howled at my face.

He threw the splintered halves to my feet and stormed off, leaving me alone on that sodden beach, only the broken body of his fallen friend about my bare feet to keep me company.

Feeling our friendship crumble, I screamed back at him against the sharp wind.

'You just ruined the best thing I ever had, Finnick Odair!'

My calls fell upon deaf ears; the boy I was already missing long gone, the wind now my only company, laughing softly at the voicing of my unhinged honesty.

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_I've already written the next two chapters, but please any comments, critiques or suggestions would be perfection. _

_I can only hope I do them justice with this interpretation. _


	5. Pull Me Out From Inside

_A slightly shorter chapter, but one that will then lead into something I think you'll all like. Again, thank you so much for your reviews, but I would love it even more if you could just pop me a comment if you do favourite or add this story to alerts, it would be gorgeous to hear your opinions; this has become my most alerted story yet. I feel so flattered!_

_And so we continue onward; with feelings being realized in unfortunate methods. _

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**V. Pull Me out from Inside.**

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The smattering of rain Finnick had left me in, those days ago had broiled into a cruel storm, the first of the spring's showers ravaging across the land.

The beach swelled with water, waterlogged and unable to hold it within all those small grains. The tides lapped close to the house, frothy water engulfing our little cove.

I was woefully trapped.

The surge of water meant I was barred in our cottage, forced to stay inside and weather out the storm. My father refused to let me help out on the boats, as they braced the waves claiming I'd be sure to be swept away. I'd swum in far fiercer waters; I protested, nearly drown as a child. He called me stubborn and laughed warmly, but still refused me. When smaller, as a way of warding me away from the waves, Mama would tell me that the sea was trying to reclaim me.

The sea's tides had picked me up when I was only five years old and swallowed me whole, dashing the air from my lungs, smashing the small crab shell I had held into a thousand shards, embedded into my palm. They'd found me bloated and blue a few minutes later, cast out by the sea into a small rock pool, face down in the shallow ripples.

Yet since then I held no reservations towards the sea, no fear. Beneath the waters I hadn't been treated cruelly; the swell had washed me numb and held me in their depths, safe from the restrictions of the world above the water.

I belonged amongst the currents. I was a girl of the sea. The girl that nearly drown and would do so over and over again until she reached those silky depths to finally transform into the fish beneath her skin.

Catfish. That's what he had called me, when passing off my speed at swimming, saying I had scales in my skin. He'd called me that too, when I found him countless times out on the beach at night, drawing shapes in the dark sand, watching the world go past, the world that refused him sleep.

_Finnick. _

I missed him; missed his smile and his odd grip on the world, his calling to the sea and his sense of the stars. Yet he blamed me for the loss of his trident, and with that had imposed a silence that now lasted longer than a week. He refused to talk to me, and the storm only aided that. He was a cove away, no doubt allowed out on his boats to help with the catch.

That stormy face I had seen him leave with was one I had not encountered before. He was livid. Livid with me, for I crime I was sure I had not committed. We had fallen together down that hill, and granted I had been the first the trigger of the ripples of consequence, but who would ever be able to prove it was my bones that broke his wooden back? Perhaps it was my fault; maybe I should just believe it was; but that would do nothing to repair the feud between us.

And he had stirred something within me. I was angry, angry to be disregarded without justification. I wanted to speak to him desperately, to see him smile and laugh again. He might want to act like a stubborn child, but I missed our time together and so set my mind towards thinking of ways to possibly seek forgiveness. It would be no help for us to both wallow in the consequences of our shouting match.

I had gingerly picked up the broken halves of the trident after he'd left me. Standing stone cold for what felt like hours; the words I wish he'd heard still lodged in my throat, the echoes of his attack ringing in my ears. The wood had become soaked in the saturated sand, tossed carelessly by the ebb and flow of the tide, as though it was a child asking if it might claim the broken toy.

But it hadn't just been a toy to him; it had be a mark of new maturity. I knew now how he'd cherished it, for the few small hours it had been his, for the speed and power he'd wielded with that three pronged weapon. He had relished not in his heightened prowess, but the token his brothers had given him, their acceptance of his growth.

Like a fallen child or a wounded prey, I picked it up tenderly, and pressing it against my chest had made my slow way across the beach towards my home. I'd cradled it in my arms, shielding it from the rain, however futile that might have been for its already warping wood.

It had taken up residence in my bed, wrapped up in as much warmth I could muster between my sheets. It seemed absurd to believe I could nurse the trident back to health, but in my thirteen years I'd never encountered any other way to meld wood.

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The days dribbled past. That night, the trident having relocated to the bottom of my bed, to curl up like cat, the rain had poured down with a wild ferocity, so much so that when I woke the next morning, I could not see a foot out from my window. The icy sheets of rain were like jail bars, for the first few days trapping the population of the seaport inside from the shear force of it's mass. With the lack of light, my hair was growing darker by the day, or perhaps that was just my overcast perception. It was as though the heavens had splintered along with the trident. Along with our dashed friendship.

Finally, after two weeks, the rain eased off enough for me to brave the now visible world. I grabbed the small source of our quarrels from the peeling paint surface of my bedside table and strode out from the comfort of my home. The rain was still icy cold, soaking my hair through within seconds. With my father's oiled fishing coat wrapped around me, my skinny frame, enveloped in its kelp green folds, remained slightly drier than my exposed skin.

The trek to the Odair's cottage would have usually taken me less than half an hour, but battling against the mounting winds it took me almost twice as long. Like a mirror to our own cove, their small dwelling was crowded by a sharp outcrop of rock, stained dark by the rain. Their boats were chained to the wall, against the storm, as were the large rusty cages in which they caught their crab, big enough to trap several small children. I dashed down the sand bank into the cove and quickly reached their front door. It was a peeling blue, a small knocker made from a rock and rope hung loosely from it. Hesitantly I debated whether or not to use it, but it's cool touch against my hand felt too unkind, too unfamiliar, and instead I set my token down on the steps leading up to his home.

The small white stone looked so fragile against the large slabs of rock.

I left it without thought and ran home, the wind this time against my back and speeding my race across the beach; me against the deep touch of bone chill. It was only once I returned home that I sudden felt the sickening need to pray that the rain would not wash away my small darling stone.

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The rain eventually stopped for a single precious week, and trade in the forum flourished once again. It had been weeks since I'd seen him, and it would be a lie to say I only went to our market stall to hunt out prospective buyers.

There was electricity in the air, as though our district had absorbed the white fingers of the storm that had troubled above our heads.

The Reaping was approaching, two months away at my last count. Around this time of year a strange atmosphere took hold; people talking especially loudly, as though they were all trying to inject a burst of vitality into all our lives, as though we could continue with the façade that our children weren't about to all be led like lambs to the slaughter house. The silence would soon swallow us all up in a few weeks. I wondered if Finnick had been training, as he had told me about before.

And then there he was, emerging from amongst the swathes of people. His bronze hair lapped up the emerging sun, alighting with a glint that made it look like a flaming corona about his crown. I cut through the crowd, making a beeline towards him. Our eyes flickered towards one another, but sharply breaking it off, he just walked straight past me, feigning ignorance towards my presence.

'You're so transparent Finnick Odair,' I called after him, hoping that might stoke at his ego and prompt a response.

He didn't even turn round.

I walked quickly up to him, and grabbing his shoulder, attempted to turn him round to face me.

'Go away,' he shot back, shrugging off my hand.

'No I want to talk,' I was near to pleading.

'I said go away!'

'No,' I replied, clenching my fists.

'You don't change Cresta,' he said shaking his head in mock disgust.

'You haven't either,' I said gesturing that stroppy face of his.

'You're the one that's all alone,' he sneered. Though his mouth was full, his eyes were empty.

'You can talk, little boy lost stealing from other's rock pools,' I shot back, examining his face.

'I'm not going to try and change your mind.' There was something; a sudden gleam of fear. This sudden stubborn defensiveness was fuelled by desperation.

'Fine then,' I shrugged limply.

He gave me a mournful stare. Could we not just forgive and forget? Alas his empty hands wouldn't allow it, and I was left once again, watching his back move further away from me.

I'd broken his weapon, and it made sense to me at last. I'd crushed his hope and exacerbated his fears; his fear of the games and the imminent Reaping. He was wracked with anxieties and I'd snapped the only thing that might keep that little boy alive. He was distancing himself from me too; what would happen if I was chosen? What would be easier to say goodbye to; his twin at heart or the broken neighbor?

He was searching wildly for a justification for why he felt such heart pounding dread, why we were tormented over and over each year; we all did. And in such blind fury he unconsciously blamed me.

.

It hurt to hear those words.

They played out in my ears in the quite that night, ringing out and filling the silence with such desperation, sleep evaded me.

I tossed and turned beneath the cotton sheets, staining them with the thoughts that drained from my eyes. Tears made a rare appearance upon my face, not from a need to appear strong or an emotionless temperament, but just purely because I had no need for them. But now in the stillness of night, my frustration leaked out, angry tears pattering against my pillow.

I was caught in turmoil, because I could so easily dismiss that boy as he had done with me, but something held me back. There was something so dear about that look in his eye, the flash of fear I had seen briefly before that lodged in my mind and refused to untangle itself from my thoughts. I was worried for him; I could admit that to myself surely?

Worried about the boy I found on the beach, the boy who killed my hair but had saved me countless times from the isolation of the sea. I could have been swallowed up so easily by it, but he perforated my solitude with rapt attention and an unwavering companionship. Until now.

But there was something churning beneath my skin, a feeling that now began to surface. I wanted to push it back under, back down into the depths of my subconscious, but as bold as the boy they were about, the thoughts refused to recede and carried on blossoming in my mind.

The faint blush of a feeling that lodged in the rhythm of my heart, and aching in my bones to bolt up right and run into the sea, and never stop. I refused to acknowledge them, fearing that they would leak out and consume me completely.

Sleep provided shelter from these volatile thoughts and finally, in the small hours of the morning, I slipped beneath the waves of unconsciousness. When I surfaced that next morning, the storm was once again outside my window.

Though this time it was a welcomed visitor, for I no longer begrudged the solitude it imposed upon me.

.

I tried all manner of ways of reconnecting the two halves, but they seemed splintered beyond repair. Thom suggested glue, but after last haul's storm we had used up all our reserving in patching up father's boat.

'We can get it for you Annie, next time when we pass by east.'

That seemed like good enough a promise to me but the boys grew tiresome of my constant asking each morning as to where they were heading. Dismay happened daily, as I learnt the shoal was traveling west, and not my preferred direction.

'There's other ways of making things stick. Perhaps not glue, them what about a cast?' Thom relayed to me one evening, as we washed the dishes together.

'What do you mean?' I was inquisitive, but my eyes still concentrated on the soapy depths, trying to hide my desperation.

'You mash kelp up with algae, coat it about the break and then let it dry out in the sun,' Thom explained.

'Does that really work?'

'I've patched up a few roofs with it, and they still withstand the rain.'

'But won't that throw the weight of it?'

'Probably, but still, you'll have a whole from two halves again.'

That seemed idealistic enough for me, and perhaps soldiering the two parts together might heal our rift.

The storm had hidden most of our crop of kelp beneath the murky waves; so with the two pieces of trident in my grasp, I headed out towards to a cove further east along the shoreline. Up and over the still wet sand bank, I relished at the scent of the fresh breeze, a light mist upon my face as I stared out to sea with eyes that reflected the colours of their depths. The waters were choppy today and further out I could see the white crests of tall waves.

I scoured the beach to see if the storm had washed any ashore but to no avail. I soon found another stretch of cliff that extended out to sea; from what I could see half its side was covered in waxy swathes of kelp. It was a particularly hard crop of rock. Unlike the worn grey I was used too in my cove, this was sharp and jagged, like the serrated edge of a knife. It was a painful dance to reach its point, the dark rock digging into the soft flesh of my feet. Keeping the trident in one hand, I grabbed a handful of kelp, grasping at the slippery ribbons between my numb fingers.

I didn't see the wave behind me, or the frothy fingers as they wrapped about my waist. I felt a strong grasp to my virgin touch as it knocked the wind from me. What I did see was the blur of colours from the fall and the rush of blood pluming before my eyes as my head made contact with the rock face.

I was dashed across the sea wall like a little cloth doll.

My hands were swollen by the cold, and empty. Empty of his trident.

As water filled my lungs, the sea's bruised depths swallowed me up.

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_Any reviews, comments or critiques you have would be nothing short of gorgeous. _


	6. Alas I Cannot Swim

_I don't often like what I write; I'll check it through my usual five times, but once I've posted it, I refuse to read it again. Saying that I'm quite content with this chapter, and though shorter than the others, it contains some dialogue I'm pleased with. _

_Anyway, my darling readers, perhaps if you agree with me you could pop me a comment or review, especially if you're kind enough, as many of you all have been to alert and favourite this piece. Of course if you hate it, do tell me, critiques are what I need if I ever wish to improve on my messy wordplay. _

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**VI. Alas I Cannot Swim**

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I couldn't breath, and before long, I didn't even want to.

Exhaustion had cemented long ago in my bones. I was weary of the world, tired of the games we were trapped in, like mice being teased by fat house cats.

But I didn't want to just crumble like soft shell, I wanted to fight and squirm from the current's grasp, but the pressure against my lungs and joints paralyzed me. The water about my head grew hazy with blood, as my wound gushed out into the open. Perhaps I could sleep within the waves; finally find somewhere free of all the districts and their rules and barbaric games.

There was no flashing of my short life before my eyes, no reminder other the sinking guilt at my own carelessness; just a cascade of bubbles dribbling from my mouth as the air was squeezed from my lungs.

What would it be like for my poor family finding my bloated body floating in the waves? That would be if they ever found it.

I thought of Mama and father, Ini and Thom, and what it would be like, carrying their daughter adorned with shells and daubed in the light green death marks upon a bed of red seaweed. I'd be lifted through the streets of the seaport, all witnesses dressed in the white traditions of a burial rite. Then my body would be pushed out to sea, to find a resting place amongst the merfolk and kelp.

I had seen a drown body before and in those last moments all I could think about was how my skin would turn blue from the loss of air, purple about the fingers as the blood settled when I washed up on the beach. Though it wouldn't be me anymore. An empty carcass; my soul departed to that golden isle. I'd be plucked from the sea, dressed in white cotton, and retuned back to it's depths once more.

In those final threads of consciousness my mind drifted to a calmer shore. There was peace in my definite fate. That was until the image of Finnick's face broke apart the still waters and sent ripples across my mind. I guess I could admit to myself how much I liked the boy, how I sometimes let my thoughts wander; to think about what it would be like if we were more than just friends. Could I allow myself to admit to feeling such things in my last moments? How silly I'd been to race so precariously about that rock, but I'd run out blindly for that boy at any hour of the day.

He'd never know.

My last thought, my last suddenly startling and heart wrenching thought. Not of my family, not of the life I had just lost. But of that bronze haired boy that would never be mine.

The tendrils of darkness had worked their way across my consciousness, and with a final heave of my empty lungs, I let myself pass on.

The world was finally so still; at last so calm.

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_A siren called to me from below. Her hair was stained dark and her skin far creamier than I had ever seen before. But she had my eyes. Perhaps she had stolen them from me, as a stinging sensation burnt like a cool flame in my sockets _

_Sea-green tides now enveloped in further sea-green depths, and so with an unwavering trust I followed her down into the inky darkness. _

_As she twisted in the water, her angular body, it's emaciated carriage of brittle ribs propelled forwards by wasted arms. She was dressed in thin underclothes, soaked through so that they clung to her wiry frame. Long clawed scars coated her body, a chunk from one of her thighs was missing and the surrounding flesh awfully burnt. _

_What I thought were swathes of hair was actually a plume of blood, erupting forth from a slash about her hairline. My stomach lurched from beneath my racing heart; it was as though someone had tried to scalp her. The blood streamed out as she swam deeper, the reddish liquids diluting in the water to create the image of an auburn mane. _

_She revolved in the water once more, her body like a rag doll, floating on the currents. _

_Her milky pallor came about again to meet my eyes; knocking the air from my lungs. _

_I recognized her face. _

.

Mouth to mouth, air pushed into my lungs, inflating their feeble mess. The water spluttered from my mouth as I gasped back into life. A dull throbbing, deep in my ribs, let on to the truth, confirming that I was once again on dry land. The ache in my heart, from those final last thoughts still lingered.

'It worked. Gods it worked,' I heard, moaned out from somewhere beside me. Like in all times of desperation my air deprived brain rationalized it was probably best to just stay down; eyes shut, limbs unmoving, to allow me to slowly rework my haggard breathing.

'Can you hear me, Cresta, can you?' The voice sounded worried, but for the life of me I couldn't summon the strength to move, the sea had sapped me of everything. I could gurgle though, I found as I tried to push a string of words from my swollen blue lips.

I was drawn up suddenly into the arms of that unseen voice; my savior. I was limp in his hold, a sodden mass of shivering bones and puckered skin. The gash in my scalp continued to bleed, staining his neck the sap of my skin. My hair was plastered to my skull and shoulders, constricting my breathing almost, I could feel the heavy fingers of saturation upon my throat.

I wanted to breathe. I wanted those lips to return to mine and whisper more air into my lungs. But the mouth would only speak, wail without helping my distressed breath.

'I'm sorry Cresta, I shouldn't have shouted at you. I was silly. Stupid.' The dirge of salt water cleared from my mind enough to make the connection; remembering from what felt like years ago, that well worn nickname.

_My name. _

I dared the world outside, and cracked open an eyelid with great trepidation.

Finnick's face swam about above mine. From what I could see, he was soaked; his bronze hair glinting with beads of salt water in the harsh sun. His words were amplified to my battered ears, making it sound as though he was shouting almost now; though I sensed, not at me.

'I'm so sorry Cresta,' he mumbled into the wet hair that clung to my neck, his apologies reverberating between my bruised sense.

'Annie,' I whispered back, wanting him to say my name, and confirm I hadn't already passed onto to some surreal limbo.

He met my yellowing eyes; 'I'm sorry _Annie_.'

I finally drew up enough energy to slur out, 'It's not your fault; it's mine. Flippers for feet.' He let out a strangled cry, but his eyes lit up once again.

We stayed like that for what felt like an age, clasped in each other's arms; both numb from the water and what had just happened. I liked the feeling of his breathing against my hair, and the pounding of his heart against my ear. It drowned out the sounds of the waves, the bloody water that had tried to claim me. My eyes stung, weeping just as the faint bruise about my eye had once inflicted. I squeezed my eyes shut and my arms even tighter, laced around his neck, willing him not to leave. Together we clung to one another in blind hope, his thumb a steady brush against my cheek.

That's how my brothers found us; two soaked children clinging onto each other as though we needed our embrace to keep our heads above the water.

Finnick let me go; limp as I was, when Thom carefully drew me from him, up into his firm arms. I felt so deflated, like a rag doll in his hold. Through my salt-stung eye, I gazed back over his shoulder, trying to catch a last glimpse of wet bronze hair before the dark lull of my brother's rocking arms stole me.

What I saw threatened to stop my heart again. My breath hitched as Kel's raised palm swung towards Finnick's sodden face, but instead of making contact, it flung about his shoulders, and my brother drawing the younger boy into a tight grasp.

The dark mist consumed my last tendrils of concentration and once again, I passed on.

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_I was in dirty water again. A shallow pool made more of mud, trapped me from beneath my arms. I clawed about the grass around me, desperately trying to find a purchase that I might be able to pull myself up from. _

_The ground began to bleed, each blade torn from the scalp of the forest floor drawing up a trickle of blood. Soon I was soaked, soaked in the thick congealing liquid, my arms bathed in a red mask. _

_It dried quickly in the humid air and I was encased in a crust so thick I couldn't move. _

_He walked out from the line of trees, close enough for me to see the beads of perspiration that clung to his forehead, clung to his hair, the bronze alight in the low sun. _

_He didn't see me, and no matter how much my mouth stretched, my voice has deserted me. _

_The trident was in his hands, but this time it was made of bone, not wood. It was slick with blood, but the reflection from the setting sun illuminated it so that a golden glow coated it's three prongs. _

_He came further into the clearing, but as he did a familiar sight drew up behind him. Like smoke, she was silent, her skin bare this time, the weight of her sodden garments now lost to her. _

_The siren approached the boy. My boy. Finnick. _

_The skin about her chest looked as though it was ready to burst from the strain of her predominant ribcage. Blood still poured from her scalp, but it was suspended in the air, as though she was still drowning like before, as though the breeze that animated it was as fluid and moist as the sea's currents. _

_The air was draining away, I found it hard to breath, but he was much worse off. He stood there, hunched over gasping for air, the trident clattering to the ground as both of his hands grasped about his neck. _

_Red liquid appeared between his fingers, spurting out from where his nails dug deep into his own flesh. He cried out from the pain, yet his hands would not stop clawing through his skin. _

_His head dropped, at first I thought in exhaustion, but it carried on falling, hitting the ground with a sickening splatter. _

_Blood poured from his severed neck. _

_His head rolled to find a resting place in my paralyzed arms. _

_Dead eyes swallowed mine. _

Arms around my waist held me tightly as I thrashed about silently, my jaw locked.

His skin felt as real as it did in the dream_; this is still a dream_,_ a cruel trick, for he was dead, dead, dead. _

I clung to his neck; hands, fingers, palms grasping at the soft flesh to check his body was still connected to his head. The skin was tight and clean of wounds and for the first time in what felt like an age, there was no moisture beneath my fingertips.

His voice whispered in my ear, commanding me to sleep; the press of him thumb once again taking up a rhythm upon my arm.

.

My bed was blissfully warm. I tested my fingers out, stretching them against the rough cotton sheets. They ached, a dull worn feeling in my bones, but I could feel the way the muscles contracted and relaxed in couples to make them move. It was as though someone had stripped me of my skin and replaced my insides with wood.

My other hand was missing, to be found entwined with a much larger one. He was only fourteen and yet his hand betrayed a greater maturity. Light blonde hair, invisible, made his hands softer, yet the skin was worn with work, the burrows of splinters and grooves of old scars. With my other hand I was free to trace my fingers along the light pink scar that ran faintly up the underside of his forearm. In past years I thought I'd grown to learn every facet of his being, just as he had done with me, but I had never found the answer to this tiny chink in his armor, the last secret of this golden prince.

He sat on the floor beside the bed, his dozing head resting on the sheets near mine. The soft morning light illuminated his face, the tips of his eyelashes a translucent quality. I poked him softy on the forehead, pressing far too lightly to illicit any reaction. His eyelashes still fluttered, and for the first time in months I saw his expression relax. My finger wandered lazily down his face; quite on it's own accord to settle on his brow, lightly tracing the untamed curve.

My brain was still so waterlogged and hazy in the lambent light. It took me sometime to realise both of his eyes were open. My finger wavered between us, a figure shocked numb once discovered. He raised his chin lazily and batted my finger's print lightly with the tip of his nose, the two of us relishing in finding one another again in the cold morning.

He stirred, and then after stretching, rose. Lifting up my arms as he did so. Even once he moved they hung out, stiff in the air.

'Stay in my bed,' my brain was bloated still with salty water and my swollen lips could do nothing to stop my desires from dribbling out of my mouth.

He watched me for a moment, and then with two gentle hands helped me move over my worn body to make room for him. He was far to gangly to fit, and his feet hung over the end, but it was nice to feel his arms enclose me once more in that embrace I had so dearly missed.

He pulled the covers over our heads and suddenly we were enveloped in a white washed world of ripples and seams.

'I'm drowning again,' I murmured, our foreheads pressed together. I could feel his breath against my cheek and his eyes upon my nose.

'Here hold onto my hands,' I felt his fingers entwine with mine, both our hands worn rough by the sea and the salt.

'I won't let you ever drown again Annie,' he whispered back, squeezing my hand tightly in his much larger one.

'You better not,' my voice was beginning to slur; I could feel the tug of sleep once more at the corners of my eyes.

'Because we're not even yet,' I reminded him.

I could feel his chuckle play about in the air between us.

'I still get to hold onto you,' my voice was getting heavier, harder to maintain, as the dregs of my consciousness began to drain away.

'And how long is that for?' he whispered into my hair.

'Forever Finnick.'

'_Forever,' _he echoed back.

.

_Was that okay? Hopefully. Please do review if you have any critiques or comments, I'll find both equally delightful. _


	7. Tap At My Window

_I'm having way too many dreams about the Hunger Games lately. _

_A much longer chapter this time, but the plot does thicken so I implore you fiction foragers to keep on going, and hopefully you'll like what you find. Of course if you do enjoy it, please do leave me a review so that I know if I'm going in the right direction; also if you are so gracious as to favourite or alert this story, please do leave me a little comment._

_And so the story continues._

.

**VII.** **Tap At My Window**

.

The Reaping was a month away; thirty days left of an unknown fate.

Silence had inflicted the town like a plague, as though at night all our tongues had been stolen away by a horde of cats.

Even Finnick was scared; his eyes often drifting to some elegiac reality, from which I'd rescue him with a nudge to the ribs. I tried to keep my thoughts away from the sickening dread of what was to come, for the sake of both of us. Finnick was at breaking point; I could see it in his darting eyes and knitted brow, as though at the slightest provocation he was going to bolt for it.

Nights were the worst. You could fill your day with menial tasks, but it was when the sun set that the demons emerged. They slipped out from the crevices of your mind, hid in the corners you forgot, to then surface, filling your mind with flashes of previous bloodbaths. The Games could never be forgotten, but for the most of the year you could delude yourself into believing they weren't real, surreal and intangible. Yet at night the fears became irrational and overwhelming, stuffing themselves down your throat to stifle your screams.

My dreams were plagued with the image of that siren, twisting about in the water. Her emaciated bones punctured my dreams, infecting them with dark, grimy waters.

She made no sound, but passed through the escapes my mind constructed with the resonance of glass shattering. Her mouth, plump with cuts and bruises stayed firmly shut, as though she was forbidden to speak. I hardly saw her face though; my mind was rather distracted by the sharp angles of her starved body, the deep gashes that ravaged her skin. One night the chunk missing from her leg began to bleed a churning mess of hot black tar and the only way to stop the convulsions her body was thrown into was the sever her leg with a blade so hot it fused my hand to the handle.

Her face was always covered and I was only able to catch glimpses of an eye or the curve of her mouth; the rest of her face always remained covered in swathes of saturated hair. But from what I could see those eyes held a striking familiarity, hidden behind her stained sandy hair. The gash across her forehead was like second mouth, red and raw, sometimes the white bone of her skull shining out like a row of glinting teeth. The flaps of skin floated in the air whispering out harsh cruelties, in no words that formed a speech. Her blood was her languages, spiraling out in the air like a script.

The siren was becoming too comfortable in plaguing my dreams. She was a projection of my mind, and so I could rationalize our physical similarities out, telling myself that the fragments of my imagination drew from my own characteristics. Yet there was still an unwavering unease. The only comforting difference between us being that she was a woman and I was still a child, yet I found that still threatening.

A ripple of noise broke me from my thoughts.

I was back in my bed, alone in the tangle of sheets.

There was a light patter, a sound not too dissimilar to that of a marble dropping. It was enough to rouse me from my hazy pondering, and so I let out from my covers; to find a small pebble on my wooden floor. It seemed such an odd shape, but holding it up to my distorted sight, I could see why. A slip of paper, ripped from one of the markets bags was attached. In the darkness it was hard to make out the wild scribble written across it; haggard loops and precarious, ill formed symbols read:

_Meet me by the rocks, early as possible. We're going back to the islands - F_

It took some time for my sleep laden mind to make sense of it, but my heart was quick to swell with the thought of returning to our secret luxury, the place where the world had no hold on us, the place I needed so desperately.

I poked my head out the window, a face full of salty night air, watching that bronze haired boy race back into the dark.

.

'The sea's a little rougher today,' Finnick remarked, his hands tightly grasping the two oars. We were half way out to sea, the sun still low in the sky from where it had only just peaked above the horizon.

The waves reminded me far too much of the last time we'd crossed these waters; where I'd been convinced he'd throw me and his broken trident out of the boat.

Together, we'd fixed it on my bed. I'd been confined to days of rest after my brush with drowning; left with a pounding head and fatigue right down to my bones. Finnick had come each day, bringing new shells and stories to keep me from jumping out the window from confinement. He'd curled up on my bed like a cat; the both of us sitting on either end, coming up with escape plans. He'd brought the trident on the fourth day, the broken shards in the one hand, and a sopping ball of kelp in the other. Together we'd hesitantly worked as one, fusing the two halves together, making more of a mess than anything. But we'd been able to laugh about it, eventually, and so it felt as though our quarrel was behind us. He'd even taken to teasing me about it, shielding the trident from me, making great leaps and bounds to jump out the way if I tripped anywhere near him, but always with a crooked smile plastered across his face.

Yet I still felt unease crossing thought waters. Perhaps from the past, but part of me believing it was more to do with the uncertainty of our future. _This could be my last time coming to the island. _

We made it onto the shore easy enough, and the island seemed to spring into life at our arrival. Calls of thickly plumed birds drew us into the forest once again to discover the sumptuous sights our eyes had once devoured. It was as though someone had stopped time, for the island hadn't changed in the slightest since we had been here last. We followed the same path as before, and yet each flower, each vine was still immaculately frozen.

We trekked our way up to the cave a while after midday, and so ate our lunches of crabmeat, expertly caught with Finnick's reunited weapon, on the rocks. We were both quick to consume, eager to explore the cave further.

The pools were situated at the far side of the cave. Smaller ones, a foot deep surrounded a far larger pool, a circle that radiated out from light green waters. Shafts of light sprung from the cave's mouth, and the cracks in the rock roof above illuminated the waters with a strange glow. The steady trickle from the long stalactites above sent a light ripple about its surface, soft waves lapping at its edge. This pool looked far deeper than it's smaller sisters, and so I dipped a toe in, sending waves resonating out across the pool. The waters were surprisingly warm, the mountain's blood dissipating out slowly with my disruption.

Finnick beside me lost his shirt and shorts quickly, wading far out into the pool, soon having the tread water.

'Annie come in, the water's so warm,' Finnick called, his face elated as he submerged himself, diving to the bottom of the pool. I took his disappearance as a chance to shed my own clothes, dropping my dress and swimming out in my underclothes. I knew I shouldn't be conscious of my body around Finnick, he'd never so much as taken a glance at anywhere other than my face. Yet compared to the other girls my age I was like a stray cat. My limbs were far too long and thin for my body and I had not a curve on me, nothing like those Capitol women who languidly swayed about on the screens. They moved as though they were jellyfish, floating through the air like balloons, the heavy clothing they wore and the succulent foods they ate being the only thing holding them down. The only reason I might blow away was for my lack of flesh. But I guess I was still only a girl, though my racing mind felt as though it might be seventy odd years old.

'Annie,' Finnick called snapping me out of my daze. I'd been standing half submerged, staring off into the glassy waters.

'Sorry,' I said shaking my head.

'Up in the clouds?' he asked, splashing water at me.

'Something like that,' I lowered myself in slowly until the waters came up to my shoulders, relishing at the warmth and colours around me.

'I think the pool's a tunnel,' Finnick said swimming to and from me in excitement.

'How'd you mean?'

'Underwater, if you look, it carries on and not too far I think.'

I dived under the water, taking a short breath. From behind Finnick legs I could see how the pool extended, under the cave's back wall. The water was still light, so it couldn't carry on for too far; there must be another connecting pool on the other side. But still, the water's distortions made it hard to tell how far exactly it went on for.

'Do you think we could do it on one breath?' My question caused his brows to knit.

'Sure,' Finnick let out a crooked smile, the smile that wasn't so bold and flashy, the smile for only me; shut down my voice of reason, and together we took a long breath and dived under the water.

His hand grasped mine and pushing past the thousands of tiny bubbles racing towards the surface, we swam deeper.

The passage was far shorter than I had thought, and after several meters we surfaced once again, still hand in hand. Together we waded out into the shallow regions of the pool, this one far larger than it's other mouth. The cave we were in now was large, Finnick's call echoing lightly.

From floor to ceiling the rock face looked as though it was on fire. The flickers of light played about its walls, as though we had stepped in a chamber of the mountains heart. The light, radiant and glowing was alien almost in a place I had expected to be so dank, for a large section of the ceiling had caved in. The fallen rocks littered the floor about the pool, all illuminated by the now setting sun. It had felt like our last meal only a short while ago, and yet out of the cut away I could see that the sun was setting; the white-hot eye ready to blink and submerge herself under the rippling waves.

We found a spot on one of the largest rocks, and sitting on its highest point we were fully exposed to the dying sunlight, it's residual rays drying us of saturation. I found myself lulling almost into a warm sleep, my hand still in his, before his soft voice broke out into the cave's silence.

'My mother would have liked it here,' Finnick remarked quietly, his gaze turned out to the sun.

Finnick hardly spoke of his mother. She'd cropped up a couple of times in our conversations, but he'd never upheld any further questions on her. From what I could remember she was a young woman, but a fear had taken over her after Finnick's birth and she seldom left their cottage. I'd heard the whispers passed about the market place about the 'mad' Odair woman. She'd surface every once in while, but I hadn't seen her in years. I'd hear sometimes from Mama of how she'd be down at the quay, trading fish, hand in hand with one of her sons. Mama would tell me of how they made talk, even gossip, and through her I had no such preconceptions of the woman, other than her relationship to Finnick.

'I think I've only ever seen your mother once,' I replied cautiously.

'Really?' he mused.

'I remember her hair. It was like it was alive. She was on top of the dunes with you, and her hair was the same colour of the sand. I thought it was my eyes, I thought the sand had caught her head,' I smiled quietly.

'It's getting grey now,' he remarked, his eyes still set far out towards the sky, out in the direction of the other shore, as though trying to seek her out.

'But she's the same age as my Mama, she can't be much older than thirty,' I turned to him.

'I guess. The doctor says it's shock.'

We had a single medical professional in the seaport, and he only earned that title from selling antidotes from his apothecary. I don't know which word to question, the doctor or the shock, but Finnick gave me no time to decide.

'I don't like them calling her mad,' he murmured, finally twisting his head to face me.

'I don't think she's mad,' I laid another hand on his. I didn't know what else to do. Finnick was placing his secrets at my mercy, and so I held them tightly in my hands.

'They all call her that,' he argued, his brows knitting in that way that made him look both old and young at the same time.

'She's not mad. Either way it's just a word. See _mad, mad, mad,'_ I repeated the word until it was no longer that recognizable, just two syllables strung together that on any other planet could have meant any other word.

'You remind me of her, your hair and eyes, though she's paler,' Finnick mumbled into his chest.

'Really?'

'She keeps me grounded, anchored to the shore,' he explained. We lapsed into silence again, until I could muster enough courage to break the tension that was building.

'Words can't hurt,' I assured him.

'But the games can,' He replied, looking me once again in the eye.

'Only your body, they can't harm your mind.'

'Because that then makes you mad.'

I sigh, 'We're going round in circles Finnick.'

'These games will send me mad.'

'Me before you,' I shot out with a hollow laugh, trying to throw the stone lodged in my throat.

We sat there, basking in the moribund light, neither of us speaking, but we were connecting sure enough.

.

When we left the sun was already setting on the other side of the mountain. With the fading light, swimming back was slightly harder, and we had to use the tips of our fingers to track the bottom of the channel.

Still soaking wet, we drew on our discarded clothing, covering ourselves more from the forest's fauna than each other. Like the cave, the forest was ablaze with the flicking light of the dusky sunset. The white bone trees reflected its colour, as though all the plant life had been daubed in glowing blood.

Our boat was as we had left it, and the sea was kind enough to carry us swiftly home, both our arms tired from swimming all day. We made good time, leaving the island just as the sun dived beneath the waves. Finnick taught me how to use the pole star as a compass and we quickly rowed out towards home, our journey only halting as we approached the cove, spotting a figure dressed in white.

It was like a ghost in the distance, rippling out on the night, a specter on the sand.

Finnick's mother was standing ashore.

.

She was as I remembered her, but there was a wildness in her eyes that was not known to me. She was thinner, no longer the weight of her children about her hips, and Finnick was right, she was going grey, the moon trapping stands of silver that lit up in her hair. She seemed to vibrate, as though suspended by wires.

Finnick was quick to leave the boat, stepping straight into the water as soon as the boat hit the sandbank.

'Mom?'

He reached out to touch her iridescent arm. She was wearing white, a cotton nightdress, the hem of which flew about with the winds playful touch. She was soaked through, her dress clinging to her body from the sea foam's touch.

'Mom what are you doing here? It's late.'

'Mom it's me, Finnick,' his hands grasped her arm tighter now.

'Mom?' He voice rose and wavered with concern.

She struck him about the cheek, and though it was dark I could already see the heat rising in his face. He didn't let go at first but she swung her arm out and his fingers released her. He staggered back, and without thought stood in front of me, his back pressing against my chest, his hand slipping into mine.

'Don't go into the waves. They want to eat you son. My son,' she called but made no further contact with his face with either her hands or her eyes.

'I won't I promise,' he whispered and I squeezed his hand.

'Promise it to my ear, not my face,' her eyes soften but her brows, almost invisible for being so blonde, tilted upwards, as though saddened by something.

He let go of my hand and moved towards her. He leant up to gently whisper something in her ear. She kissed him swiftly on the cheek, the one she'd hit only a moment ago, and her hand took place in his where mine had once been.

He looked back at me, but the darkness made it hard to see his eyes clearly. His face was a mix of emotions, worry and embarrassment almost, as he led her away.

'Goodbye Annie Cresta,' she called melodically over her shoulder.

Her sandy hair made it hard to hear my name, as her mane whipped and wrapped itself around her face.

The siren then left the beach.

.

After my day's disappearance, I wasn't allowed anywhere near the sea and I thought I was at breaking point. For days I was trapped on solid land, but unless I revealed mine and Finnick's secret wonder, I was not allowed to enter the water. To counter my need to submerge I was bathing several times a day, sitting in the milky water, trying to brush the siren's touch from me.

I sat in our old rusty tub repeatedly pouring the water back and forth between the bath and my bucket. We were lucky enough to own the tub, and for all its peeling paintwork and uneven legs, it was a privilege many didn't have. We had no running water from a tap like in the kitchen, but the recent storm had filled the large outdoor tanks, and so I had a bucket all to myself.

The water was cold, but not unwelcome. Nothing like the sea, this water was harsh but clean; it scrubbed me of the dirt beneath my skin, the fears that even the sea could not banish. I was methodic but not fast. I took my time to scrub every inch of my body clean until I was a red raw.

As a child I'd tried to scrub away the freckles on my arms; the scars on my knees, wash away all the impurities that my young skin had already chalked up, but now I let them rest. Perhaps it had been what Finnick had said that night, his intrigue with the stars. I saw them now the constellations on my skin.

.

I found him sitting on my bed, the window open. I had just had another bath and was wrapped up in our family's single towel, and so commanded him to close his eyes as I redressed. It was late in the day, and already I knew he had the intention to stay, so I too curled up on my sheets.

It plagued both of our minds, yet neither of us wanted to voice its name, as though we were tempting fate. The reaping was just over a week away, and already sleep was a distant luxury. We sat like that for hours, my head on his shoulder, our worn bodies side by side, watching the light of my room die out and the darkness descend; another day gone.

'I can't sleep,' I murmured against his shoulder.

'Me neither,' and after a pause, 'what do we do?' I liked the way he referred to us and as a 'we'; a unit, a companionship.

'Become sea otters and escape south,' I suggested, feeling his face turn upwards in a smile.

'I'd love that, though would I be able to take my trident?'

'Of course, and I'll take my nets and shells and we'll live on the island.'

'With all the fish we can eat.'

'Yes, with all the fish we can eat,' I repeated.

'My mother once told me she was a sea otter,' he voice grew quiet once again.

'How'd you know she's not?' I asked

'Because then I'd been one too,' he reasoned.

'The three of us can be sea otters together.'

'You're a catfish more like,' he laughed.

'And you're a slimy eel,' I poked his leg.

'Thanks,' he accepted with a begrudging voice. The stillness of the night enveloped us once again, the soft noises of the recurrent waves drifting through the still open window.

'What did you whisper to your mother? The other night,' I asked in a low murmur, hoping almost he hadn't heard me. But he had, and slowly, drawing in a breath replied:

'I held her hand and told her to stay golden.'

'Stay golden?'

'It's a phrase she likes; it's old too, hundreds of years old she tells me. It helps her keep hold.'

'Stay golden,' I repeated liking the way it held in my mouth.

'See it works,' he said, letting out a huge yawn and settling his head on the top of mine. I could feel his body slump slightly as he fell into unconsciousness, and the lightness of his breath drew me in closer to a slumber.

As we both drifted off to sleep I whispered out finally into the unstill night,

'Stay golden Finnick.'

And at last, I slept.

.

_The siren was there, out in the air, suspended in the cave's cavernous space. _

_For a second she was Finnick's mother, but then she was not; transforming into the untraceable face of that familiar girl. _

_She twisted round in pain, yet her body did not fall, as though supported by string; she was weightless. _

_A thousand small white scales encrusted her body, like spines, rippling in the nonexistent breeze. The scales engulfed her skin, consuming her hair and as she contorted in the air, began to lengthen. Finally, a convulsion shook though her body, and she dropped to be swallowed by the pool. The impact sent out a flurry of her now finger long, white scales, fluttering out in the air. _

_They were slips of paper. Thousands of them._

_They seemed to pass through my fingers, like ghosts, as I tried to grab at them with my heavy arms. Finally I caught a single one, and unfurling it found two words, illegible with the eyes of my dream. _

_Written in a script could not understand, I turned to instead find the siren. _

_And then there, up in the place of the mouth of the cave; a large televised screen, her face, now exposed. She was running, fighting, killing faceless hordes of child-sized creatures._

_Then wound on her forehead opened like a mouth and a wave of blood crashed down, filling the cave, with the force of a broken dam._

_._

I woke with a start, my breath hitched as I sat up suddenly. I was alone, my absent dreamer having covered me with my sheets, which were bunched up tightly in my fist, as he had departed.

I touched the skin on my arm, checking that it was dry, and not caked in crusted blood. The pale flesh was thankfully clean.

The image of the siren was foggy in my mind, but as the clarity of my insight was restored, the image began to sharpen. I went to the basin to wash the sleep from my eyes, only to find an all too familiar sight.

Her eyes, her hair, her skin all stared back at me in that little cracked mirror. It wasn't Finnick's mother, for the siren was in my face.

But there was no her; only me. And finally the plague of dreams made sense; the torrent of bloodied and bloated bodies.

I knew, like a stone in my stomach, what it meant.

The siren was to be my fate.

I was going be to be chosen in the Reaping.

.

_And so as you've probably guessed, the next chapter shall be the Reaping. Oh how woeful. _

_If you enjoyed this chapter please do pop me a comment or a review, both are absolutely sumptuous. _


	8. You'll be Reborn Big and Stronger

_It's heart breaking writing a story laden with so many precursors, to tragedies that are still to come, but it's almost like a puzzle at the same time. My word document with all published chapters and future ones has surpassed 60 pages, so there is still a lot more to come. I keep on having waves of inspiration at the most inopportune times, and find myself writing on a menagerie of curious items! _

_Thank you all so much for your comments and favourites, it makes me so unbelievably happy to receive them, and thank you dearly for taking the time to write them. If you do have any critiques or suggestions or would just like to say what you liked or disliked, please do pop me a comment; I'll adore you for all eternity.  
><em>.

**VIII. You'll be Reborn; Big and Stronger**

.

The reaping was coming, and the little time I had left was trickling away.

With a wide-eyed ferocity I watched the world around me, the world I was sure I was to lose soon.

For the siren had selected me to become wed in death to the torture of the games.

I was going to be reaped.

The siren had decided it so; her only kindness being the foresight she gifted me with her presence.

I could feel an illness take about my mind, the faint trances of madness slither into the crevices of my brain, only Finnick's smile and the comforting sound of the sea to help me forget.

.

I spent my days as a ghost. My skin shed it's weight, my limbs limp, my legs only worked to carry the fear lodged in my stomach forwards.

My family were much the same. We lumbered about like dolls on strings, waiting for those gaudy puppeteers to cut us down. Each breath felt forced, as though a weight upon my chest held down my ribs with each compression. I was sinking, already ankle deep in dread; the only way to keep my head above the tides was to keep on moving; as though if I were to sit down, I might never get up again.

I found that happening in the mornings, unable to rouse myself for any real reason. Nights were haunted by the siren, the one I had briefly thought to be Finnick's mother; but instead was only an apparition of my coming demise. I didn't want to close my eyes, because she was behind them, waiting in the darkness of my corneas.

But equally I did not want to wake, because that meant another day had been spent.

Nine days soon became a week, and that soon became five. Five days left.

.

The sunsets became stagnant to me, but there was no use hiding under my covers from them. It was like a rose, unfurling in a lament glow, a corona of wispy clouds I once knew the name of, forming it's crumbling petals. Everything was dying about me, even the sun, as it's fled the moon in its daily rotations. So I set out that night, out into the brisk air to sit on the sand.

I liked the feeling of it between my toes, it was so familiar to the soles of my feet; the wet grains, soaked through from a day under the wave's ebb and flow. Strings of kelp now lined the beach, how I could have used them before. Shells too, small and perfectly coiled, reflected the dying sun's last rays; all of them alight along the beach; like a thousand glowing eyes staring back at me.

I found a place to sit, alone all but my nightdress, to watch the sand's blind sight slowly dissipate as the sun hid behind the horizon.

As night fell, so did the temperature and I regretted instantly not covering up more. I wore the same nightdress I had owned since a child; so worn that it was ripped about the hem and years of grass stains coloured it's folds.

'Why are you out here?' came a voice from behind me, carried by the airs current.

I twisted my head round to find Finnick approaching me slowly; his hands in his pockets, a blanket around his shoulders like a scarf.

'That's going a little overboard for just your neck,' I grinned, glad he had found me.

'Well I could always do this,' he removed the roll of fabric from around his shoulders, and shaking it out, settled himself next to me on the sand, wrapping the thin layer of warmth about us both.

I debated telling him, releasing out to the wind the horrors I contained within my chest, the fear that sat like seawater in my gut.

'I think I'm going to be chosen. I had a dream about it.'

'You dreamt about it Annie?' he questioned.

I nodded my head, my voice failing me suddenly, as though it was silly to rest so much on a few apparitions of my tired mind.

'I dream about it too. Nightmares, actually. But it doesn't mean it's going to happen,' his arm, warm still through the thin layer of blanket, wrapped about my shoulders. His voice was comforting to hear, to have his assurance ring out in my ears along with all the other whispers of worry, but still, there was that underlying thread of fear in his throat.

'Annie, tell me what you saw,' he asked, his voice still level.

'I saw me. But older,' I began, but the churning of my stomach picked up and I didn't know if I wanted to continue.

'And?' he coaxed.

'I was drowning and twisting about too. There was a gash on my forehead; deep enough to see skull, and a large part of my leg had been hacked away. I've been seeing a siren. She comes every night, and even now when I blink,' it was true; she now surfaced even in the flicker of darkness as my eyes dispelled its dryness. Unlike me she had no fear of facing each day, and polluted my mind at every hour.

'They're just nightmares Annie. You just have to choose to ignore them.'

'How?'

'By rationalizing them out. That's what my mother does when she has a bad dream,' his voice lowered almost to a rasp, talking about his mother and her failing grip on reality too tender.

'Does it help her?'

He nodded 'Your name's only been in once before. You just have to remember the odds.'

'May they ever be in your favour. _Our_ favour,' I reminded him.

'Exactly, and I'm older. My names in there more than yours has.'

He made me feel fractionally better, and under our little threadbare blanket, I felt a little safer, as though the games weren't a part of our small corner of the world. Finnick and me and sea made three.

Yet he had fallen silent, suddenly caught up in thoughts of his own possible selection. Though I was still stuck on the idea that it was my fate to become a tribute.

'I'm sorry Annie,' Finnick confided under his breath.

'You have nothing to be sorry for Finnick,' I replied, suddenly confused.

'I shouldn't have got so angry over the trident,' he protested, his voice getting louder, though only for me to hear.

'You've already apologized Finnick, we both did.'

'But I still feel so wrong,' he replied, shaking his head, his bronze hair fluttering slightly with a night breeze.

'I thought if I was angry at you, if I kept my distance-,' he explained.

'It might be easier,' I finished for him, 'you're scared too, aren't you Finnick?' I asked in a quiet voice, as though I dared not speak aloud such fears; or perhaps they were hopes, that I wasn't the only one so overly afflicted.

He nodded his head and from between his swaying locks I could see the distress on his face. He was still so young, we both were, and soon the games would be upon us, and I would be torn from him. Would his face be like that as he watched me be pulled limb from limb on those screens?

'I thought you hated me,' I finally say aloud.

'Never,' he dispelled with a quiet smile, 'I don't think I'll ever get rid of you.'

'I'll creep up on you Finnick. Always,' my heart felt as though it was glistening, for it had been in such turmoil for so long, it felt silent for once.

'It would be strange without you.'

'So don't go anywhere. Simple,' I elbowed him lightly in the ribs, scrunching my nose in my smile I reserved just for him.

'Simple,' he repeated and I dropped my head onto his shoulder, enjoying the friendly contact.

When I was sure I was about to drift into the blank darkness of sleep, his voice played out quietly in my ear.

'You've already crept up on me Annie,' he whispered into my hair.

.

My sleep remained void of dreams that night, and remained so for the next few days. Perhaps it was the constant shifting in distress, my mattress providing no comfort.

Before my bed would be a place of solitude, a place where at night I could pretend that the rest of the world had blown away, and I was the only one left. Yet on those nights, I could never truly convince myself that that was true.

I could've been dead to the world; I _could _be dead to the world. But I knew that on that morning, my district would still rise, all the districts would; mothers and fathers clutching onto children. The games would still go on even if I ceased to exist. There was a world out there, all lying in wait for a day they all dreaded.

Was he still awake, a cove away, tossing about restless in his own sea of sheets, like a lost little fish trying to brave out the storm.

Sleep refused me that night. I tried to entice it to be my companion, but the idea of it soon deserted me, leaving me alone in the small hours of the morning with nothing but a lead filled stomach. There were no prayers or spells that would stop the sun rising.

But I found myself only wishing for one thing.

I knew my fate had been sealed, the siren had proved it so. Tomorrow my name would be called, I was as sure of that as I was of swimming. But what I prayed was that Finnick's name would not be selected. I had seen the fear on his face, and the larger part of my own dread was for his sake.

.

I drifted between planes of consciousness, not sure of the world. I woke with a heavy head that morning, my body still paralyzed by a rigor. None of my family had woken me, and I rose close to midday. I washed quickly, scrubbing under my nails and about my fingers, rubbing the skin raw with that small bristle brush. Dressing proved a task, with the light yellow sundress Mama had lain out for me turning into a sudden complexity. It was the same one I had worn the year before, the small daisy chain pattern remaining the same under my thumb and finger, as I reminded myself of the material. It had been Mama's before mine, and had lasted her through all the Reaping. I said a quick apology to the dress, saying sorry for this being that last time it would be worn.

I needed something tangible to hold onto, to anchor me in this world with touch. My eyes were failing me, and my blood was pumping so loudly in my ears, the world was filled with nothing but a pulsating crackle. It was on my bedside, his present to me all those months ago. It felt worn beneath my fingers, but felt like home, like the sea and of him. The small square of net was filled with all the smells and textures I needed to keep me from imploding horrifically.

In the kitchen I managed to stomach two small dried apricots, their sweet taste absent somehow, replaced by bland flesh that I merely chewed over and over in my mouth. Mama brushed my hair through with a small bone comb, letting my light hair curl naturally into a slight wave. It wasn't long enough to be plaited around my head, so instead she braided it down my neck in a fishbone plait, finishing it with one of my birth date ribbons, a green to match not my eyes, but his.

As I was thanking her, the signal went out.

.

The public area around the Justice building was a sea of throbbing characters. Like a giant hive of bees, people swum about restlessly, dividing and segmenting out into gender and age. There was an unspoken sense of order. We had all done this before, and apart for two of us, we would do it all again next year, and the year after that infinitely. Eye contact was repeatedly refused, no one wanting to see the animalistic panic that played out in others minds. You could feel it; electricity in the air, so thick it was like a soup; a living broth of our sweat, tears and dissolved hope.

I couldn't remember anything anymore; only the push of the crowd and the last words that had passed my lips. 'Hold her hand,' I'd made father promise. I wished someone were there to hold my hand.

I was lost in the crowd, only my throbbing feet and wildly beating heart guiding me in any direction. I was driven close to the stage, being one of the youngest in the crowd. I desperately wanted to find Finnick, to see him even, to say my goodbyes. But he was nowhere for my roving eyes to find.

District 4 had a new escort this year, and she was like none I had seen before. Her skin had been bleached of all its colour. Her lips too were bloodless, a blue tinge to the corners as though the pigments had drained away. She was young, but the exaggerated size of her eyes made her look like a child, a porcelain doll head propped upon an ill sized body. I could see her lashes from here, encrusted with coral red crystals, so heavy I was surprised she kept her eye open at all. Her hair was something to draw a gasp. An ice blue, its length twisted up and away from her head; suspended in the air entirely on its own. She looked like a comet, her mane the white flame tail that encased and followed those speeding rocks as they streaked across the sky.

Her voice was like froth. So light that it was hard to hear her over the wavering of my heart; as it fluttered and threatened to fail me.

The hand went in, and I drew in my breath, knowing the name that was about to be called. Here it was, the fate's call, the four syllables that once denoted my being, now served the purpose of defining my death.

_'Lieve Brook'_

My brain imploded.

I could feel the pressure of blood pumping round my head break loose in a torrent. The crowd swarmed about, cries rung out across the forum, the wails of many that mourned the premature deaths. I hadn't heard the male tribute's name called and stood resolute. The crowd was so dense and packed I couldn't see anything apart from the delegate, who slowly wafted her tattooed hand in the air; as though it was so light it was being passed along by a gentle breeze.

I began to breathe again, oxygen retuning to my still churning brain. I could relax, we were safe, another year passed without recognition. I tried to steady myself, but the crowd was becoming restless. Cries, odd and shrill like seagulls still called, but I could see nothing but shoulders and the press of grim faces, shielding my view. Finally the jostling stopped and the wall of bodies, impenetrable it seemed finally cracked apart, my field of vision suddenly flooding open.

My heart stopped once again.

Finnick was upon the stage.

.

The crowd began to dissipate, as I stood there, unable to move.

I felt a hand slip into mine, and finally turned to see its owner. Ini stood behind me, his face a mask.

I ripped my hand from his far too quickly, but panic was seeping through me.

'I have to see him. I have to see him Ini,' my eyes were wide and my mouth gapped but words refused to form, rather hanging there limply on my lips.

My eye roved around the milling crowd, a sea of mournful faces, searching for those few bonded to the boy by blood.

A hand patted me on the shoulder and my head snapped round, my neck cracking sharply. Finnick's mother stood beside me, her other hand firmly clamped in her husbands.

I'd never seen her so closely before, in the clarity of day. Her son's eyes and her own were one and the same, as though their irises had been cut from sea-glass; sharp, attentive. A small web of wrinkles radiated from their corners; a lifetime spent squinting against the sun. Her hair was unlike his though, a dull gold; what had once been so glossy had been sapped by her self-imposed solitude. Her hand was warm like his against my bare shoulder, nails cut almost to the cuticle, a lattice of ragged scars supplying a reason for such. The child she had carried had never left her. Not truly.

No words passed between us; no time for such trivialities. I followed the Odairs through the parting of the crowd, people springing backwards, not wanting to touch, not wanting to involve themselves in a family that may soon be in mourning. Those who were already in mourning.

I felt her hand in mine, her faint pulse beating like a rabbit in a trap against my own jerking palpitations. Her hand at that moment in time was the only thing I could believe to be true, could trust. The world around me had turned on him; fate was playing a cruel trick on the Odair boy, the boy whose name I felt pained to even think of. But right now her hand was the salve to the hornets nest that prickled about underneath my skin. The world swam around me, boys and girls in their finery slipping through my vision like eels in my hands. How could I believe in this reality? I could not trust the world around me, not my eyes, not my ears, for they had betrayed me; subjected me to such horrors.

All I could believe in now was the touch of her hand, leading me onwards, and the pulse that still pumped the living blood of an Odair, for now it had become so precious. I stumbled slightly up the stairs to the Justice building, but the feel of her palm kept me upright, like he had always done for me on those slippery rocks. And so I began my game; to pretend that I was only at sea, to let myself fall into the delusion that I was awash with it's spray, not sweat and that my ascent was not up hard steps, but a steep climb of rock. And that the boy inside that building; scared and seeking sedation, was actually hidden from sight, not by peacekeepers, but by cave walls. The ability to manipulate reality came readily; my mind too choked by fear for him that it was easy to feed it more lies, easy to create more disturbances in my mentality.

We were led in to a paneled corridor; it's wood stained by such dark resin, I could have been led to believe it was night. A row of chairs allowed us to relieve our weight; it felt suddenly as though I had doubled in size, the increase in mass pressing down upon my spine.

The Odairs where allowed to bundle into an adjacent room, it's door snapping sharply shut. Alone and without her hand the world be came all too real again. I didn't want it to be; I wanted it to be a dream, to be allowed to cover my ears and drown out the faint murmur of despair and regret. I wanted to close my eyes so tightly they hurt, shut out the feeble light emanating from the blinded window. And so I did. I sat there and shut of my senses one by one, only to be reawakened to the world with the press of that newly familiar hand.

Rising to stand was a feat, as though a physical weight lay slumbering in my stomach, heavy and impossible to digest. I wanted to see him desperately, shield him under my arm and make an escape, but at the same time I was scared. Not of him, never, Finnick was the one person I could never fear. Rather it was the finality of it all. Was this truly the end?

I stood limply in the doorway, as he stood equally so at the window. We approached each other slowly, and together fell into an embrace, arms wrapped tightly about each other.

'There's no point forgetting it, denying it. It's happening. To me.'

'That doesn't mean a thing Finnick. I know you. I do now, and I know that you survive.'

His arms tensed about me, I could feel his face buried in my hair, my own in his shoulder. His pulse, unlike his mother's was resilient though; not calm exactly, but resolute, determined.

'It seems I spend most of my time like this,' he whispered though we were still alone.

'And when you come back, I promise we'll never be untangled,' I liked the idea of that, me and Finnick forever like tied kelp.

'If I come back,' he murmured into my neck.

'_When _you come back Finnick,' I replied firmly, not letting the concept of any other outcome even blossom in my mind.

'I bought you something,' with that I let go of him, and stepping back I pulled from my pocket the square of netting, so small and ragged now; still loved and dearly cherished.

'It's okay,' he refused it softly.

'I want you to have it,' I pressed, selfishly knowing the deluded safety I thought I could provide him with.

'Annie, it's okay.'

'Don't you want it?' Incomprehension flashed across my face.

'I don't think they'll let me take in two tokens,' he explained dryly.

From his Reaping shirt, he pulled out a circle of twine from around his neck. He held it's small length up to the inadequate light, upon which was threaded the small stone.

'Our old stone. I won't be alone, will I?' There was such fragility in that tiny, white ring, and yet thoughts of the siren's spell, their teeth and the protection surrounding such pearls softened my resolve.

'Never Finnick,' I smiled weakly.

'I never paid you back,' Finnick sighed, limply shrugging his shoulders.

'For what?'

'Your hair,' he reached out and tugged lightly at my short braid, the end still a blunt end.

'Come back to me then. Promise you will. Owe me your life.' They felt like words too plump for my immature mouth by I meant them with all will of sincerity.

'A promise then.'

My lips moved on their own accord but I did not begrudge them. I kissed him softly on the cheek. A final farewell as I was guided out of the door, catching my final glance of the slumped boy I knew as my dearest friend.

The boy who unlocked the love my heart held dark.

.

_It's really getting into the thick of it now. I found writing the next chapter really quite difficult, but a welcomed challenge. It's exciting to introduce all the other tributes to you, so I'll try and update soon. Of course if you enjoyed this chapter or hated it passionately, please do tell me, your reviews are so precious to me. _


	9. Spare Me My Ocean

_9 chapters now, how surreal. This is by far the longest piece of continuous fiction I've ever written. Thank you all so much for your lovely reviews, please keep them coming, and if you do favourite or review, do pop me a little comment. I had so much fun embellishing all the details of the other tributes and personalizing them. Sad they'll get the chop soon. _

_So, let the games begin. _

**.**

**IX. Spare Me My Ocean**

**.**

I ran all the way home and did not care to stop until I felt the water beneath my feet.

Finnick was gone and at last I howled out to the waves; wailing over and over my distress.

He was gone; driven, captured, kidnapped away from me to be slaughtered before my very eyes. No chance for the eloquent farewell my heart yearned for; I might never see him again. I drove such thoughts from my mind; they had no place in there and would be promptly prosecuted.

The sea's touch about my ankles was the only things keeping me faintly lucid, the light lapping around my bare legs an anchor for my slowly dissipating sanity.

I waded out further, and sat down on the sea bed, immersing myself in the frigid waters. Perhaps, I hoped that that would shock my system and I'd wake from this terrible dream. The sea and its unkind tendencies bathed my arms and stomach in a cold grasp, throttling a shiver out from between my lungs.

My mind was going rampant with all the thoughts of the vast array of possibilities that could lie ahead, but the myriad of feelings just felt so hazy and confusing. The tangle of broken, incomplete trails of thought were festering in my mind; even Finnick's face, the one thing I had always relied on staying constant, had become blurry.

I called for him, but he did not come. He wasn't behind me or in the boat. He was on a train. He was on a train to a future marred with futility; and even if he had the imperfection of surviving, what state would he return it?

I was going to become part of the sea, I decided. A sea otter, as he had promised me. And we'd be sea otters together.

I slipped further down into the waters, letting the lulls carry my head, suspending me just enough to breathe.

The sea was faintly warm now, perhaps from my own slipping delusions; and I let myself be carried away by the waves; away I prayed, to our secret islands.

.

I did not wake there; instead I rose wrapped in an unfamiliar blanket. It was scratchy against my skin but not unkind; it was warm and so welcomed.

Someone had let my hair down, and it was draped around my neck, the only part of me that was exposed. I twisted round suddenly, in fear that I had lost my ribbon, the one gifted to me from my family last birth date. At that moment, that's all the importance my life drew.

My eyes finally locked onto it, as it was slowly and carefully wound through unknown fingers. The hands were delicate and soft, a dewy pallor that seemed to radiate out in the faintly smoky light. As the fingers twisted, I soon caught sight of the web of thin scars that coated them. They travelled along their length vertically and were entirely intended. There was a strange beauty to them though; as the pale pink scars interweaved themselves with my ribbon.

I dared to look up, and found my eyes latch onto those of Finnick's mother.

She sat not far from were I lay, in a battered old armchair. On looking round, I found that I had slumbered on a threadbare couch; it's colour so worn I couldn't make it out. The blanket rapped tightly around me was a deep blue, torn by years of comfort, smelling faintly of some sort of batter.

'Solesha, here's your tea,' came my Mama's voice, faint and far away. It hadn't lost any of its warmth, but I could hear the tears that threatened to break. I felt her presence behind me, as she wordlessly passed a small chipped cup to Finnick's mother, whose eyes never left mine. Mama didn't touch me, as though it might be unfair to bring attention to the youngest child she still possessed.

Finnick's mother's hand stopped twisting and reached out, handing me back my ribbon. I missed the way it had looked in her hands, like a small slippery eel, passing through ice water currents. I pressed my hand to hers; it felt nothing like her missing sons, cold and smooth, and squeezed her fingers lightly about the ribbon. We stayed like that, hand in hand, eye upon eye, breathing and feeling as one; two parties mourning a single loss.

Our eye contact refused to waver and I understood what lay behind there. Finally her fears were alive and out in the world, for all to see, her son slaughtered on the silver screen before them.

She moved forwards, off her chair, to crouch before me. I shuffled upwards a little, but was stopped, as her hands, still entwined in the ribbons light dance, began to weave my hair into a plait.

I could feel Mama's eyes on us, but she did not move, and we all stared in rapt attention at Finnick's mother's work. She was methodical in weaving the simple plait, carefully dividing the hair into three parts, and braiding it with a careful precision. Finally she tied it off with the ribbon, transferred from her nimble fingers to my own chopped locks.

And then, much to my surprise, she lent forwards, her mouth coming close to my ear.

'Stay here,' she whispered in a low, hoarse murmur.

'Stay golden,' left my lips before I could restrain them. She settled herself back down in the chair, her eyes closed tight, her mouth quivering with his name.

.

A hand upon my shoulder woke me this time. I had spent much of the day unconscious, not waking for food or water. But when I did rise from the depths of my blank sleep, I found I had been moved to sit upright, and beside me was Kel, Finnick's brother.

A small projector across from me now, had been set up in the Odair's cottage, so that I sat adjacent to the scene playing out on the white wash wall. Night was taking hold outside, so the colours were brighter, more luminous in the dark.

I felt like an intruder. My family stood back, and yet I took up a space in their midst. Though it seemed none of the Odairs had even noticed my presence, as all of their sea green eyes remained locked on the small projected image.

They gave some light coverage on the mentors, and when it came round to District 4 the well-known faces of Magalia Crept and Thorin Hook flashed up upon screen. Mags was a comfort to see; I'd watched her face grow with age each year, but she was a deft mentor and had ensured the lives of several victors, Thorin included.

Thorin was an oddly majestic boy of twenty. His height was imposing; standing several feet taller than the adoring crowd. His handsome face was famous, but his heavily marred chest was equally known. His hair was a flaming copper, yet for all the life his locks possessed, his eyes were devoid of character. He had died along with those other 23 children those four years ago; only somehow his body had remained animated.

Soon the screen flickered, resting on a roving feed of Circle City. The scene was alight with feeble fireworks, and droves of waving hands from a sea of multicoloured birds, their heavy plumage like a suffocating smog.

The parade began with the usual shower of sparks, acid greens and deep reds shooting off into the sky from some unseen source. Then the carriages began to emerge.

District 1 had opted this time for very little clothing; an obvious ploy to the sponsors. The girl, who must have been around seventeen, was announced in a scrolling text along the bottom of the screen to the name Orchid. She was draped in a long blood red plume of fabric, with sprung forth from two golden clasps at her shoulders, tumbling down her stomach, leaving the bare sides of her legs to be exposed to the watching crowd. The boy, Blaze, looked younger by a few years; and was dressed similarly to Orchid, his own thin red coverage beginning about his waist.

District 2 came after them, and it looked as though their two black horses might be buckling under the strain of their weight. Laden in a heavy coat of chain mail, the two tributes were a formidable sight. The girl, Wren, was a mass of dark curls; her eyes, darting out from a solemn face, were the colour of pitch. Her companion, Grey, stood several heads taller than Wren's already impressive height. Even beneath the armour I could see his was nothing more than a trained mass of rippling muscle.

After the sight of those two carriages, District 3 was a breath of fresh air, somewhat. They looked ridiculous, in a tangled mass of wiring, which obscured the two quivering twelve year olds from view.

He was dressed in a state of grandeur.

It shocked me as he emerged from the Victor's Tunnel, for he was as I had never seen him before.

Unlike the previous three carriages, a mass of tumbling fabrics and textures; District 4 were completely bare; only a light coat of sand giving any coverage. The crowd went wild of course, for the Capitol's suitors had already singled Finnick out as the one to watch. The intended effect was to age him, yet to me, he still looked like that little boy on the beach.

Lieve was a head shorter than Finnick, but had a full two years on him. She was perilously blonde, the sort so fair, her brows and lashes were completely translucent. The consequence it had on her face though, made it a mask of indeterminate emotion. Her steel cut gaze scanned over the crowd, refusing to pass over Finnick. There was a flash in her eye, perhaps one that only I caught, as her gazed seemed to lock onto something in the crowd; or perhaps, someone.

He was bare-chested, as was Lieve, her disgruntled face revealing all. They were encrusted in sand, as though they had gotten wet in the sea and had promptly rolled about in the banks. That was apparently it, but as the chariot was pulled along and Finnick twisted in a mix of awe and salutation. A smattering of scales in swirling shoals, suddenly luminescent to the crowd, glimmered and spun out in a mother of pearl sheen.

A rose came their way, and Finnick jovially put it between his teeth, playing the part of the crowd pleaser. Lieve refused to join in, but never the less, a shower of roses rained down.

My heart oddly leapt at that. They not only liked him; they adored him, and that could go an awfully long way.

The screen faded out after President Snow's speech and we were left in an odd silence.

A clap, short and sharp rang out. Kel began to clap slowly, and soon Ini joined in. We all began clapping, solemnly at first, but then Kel's voice rose above the din, to announce proudly; 'We might have a winner yet this year.'

Murmurs of approval passed about; 'My brother' was met by nods of 'My son'.

_My son, my brother, my boy. _

.

It was late. The Odairs were scattered about the house, Kel sleeping beside me; our fathers outside smoking some burnt tall grass. Mama might have returned home, I didn't know, but Finnick's mother was gone, as was Thul, to the bedrooms elsewhere.

I rose carefully, making sure not to wake the resting form beside me. Even in sleep, Kel's face was troubled, his fingers grasping onto the sides of the couch in an unconscious distress.

His room was a lot like mine, bare but for a bed. Like me as well, his older brothers shared a room, whilst Finnick's matchbox sized one featured a single ragged mattress.

Shelves were lined with rocks, some small, some brutality large, all nestled in amongst dried sea-sponges and crops of broken coral. On little nails driven into the wall were a collection of jawbones. They varied in size and shape, but all were lined with rows of tiny pointy teeth. I recognized the jaw of a few seals; the mouth of a baby shark we had found a few months ago, dried up on the beach. We'd visited it every day, watching as nature took its course, until the bones were exposed and together we washed them clean. I wondered where the rest of it had gone, returned to it's mother sea perhaps.

From his small window I could see the sun was settling in the sky. I seemed to be caught in this time a lot lately; the twilight hours. I was neither here nor there, aloft but not grounded. I was in a distressing limbo, knowing that he was so far from me; for the fear I had seen in his eyes only a few days ago. He had not let such feelings slip so far on camera, but I recognized the quiver of his brows, the tensing of his jaw; the expressions that only I recognized in him.

He was there in that room. In the crooked pillows and still unmade bed; in the frantic array of stones and pebbles and the wall of treasures.

He was in the trident that lay under his covers. It's three prongs lay upon the pillow like a head, and I imagined him putting it to sleep that morning, bidding it farewell.

I was too weary in the fading sunlight to travel down the worn stairs again, to rest on the couch as I had before. His bed looked so comforting, but I knew it could not be disturbed. Only Finnick could be the one to return beneath those sheets; and so they would stay frozen until his touch. This room was to stay still, like an inhaled breath, and I was to respect that.

Instead I found a place on his floor. The wood was warm to my touch, as his room resided above the kitchen. I curled up in a ball and looked towards the ceiling, knowing that the touches of him would at least keep me safe from the siren that night.

.

The interviews came that next day, and I did not know what to expect.

Caesar Flickerman was alight in a raffish costume, his hair a deep ochre this year, his eyebrows slanted wildly to suit.

The tributes paraded on, allowing us to examine their gait with speculative eyes. The youngest seemed like smoke, the boys from 5 and 8 looked as though they might be swallowed in their suits, smiles stitched up with silk. They took to their seats, eyes expectant to the audience, a shoal of small fish waiting for the bait of the hook.

Orchid came first, a wash with strings of garnets and rubies, playing about in her white blonde hair. She looked like a bone, washed clean, a trickle of beaded blood traipsing down her length. Her voice was to be expected, high and jaunty, like the approach of a wasp. Blaze was akin to this, his nose rising to new heights as he sneered out his well practised answered; clearly alluding to his high opinion of himself.

Wren was far quieter, yet her eyes never seemed to match her mouth. It was plumped with conversation, but her answers were short and to the point; predictable and calculated. But her laugh was something else, a trill of gaiety, her mouth thrown back to reveal rows of glinting teeth; all as though poised in attack.

Grey too was a boy of few words, but unlike his partner, he had little time for laughter. The scowl never left his face, as he pressed upon the audience,

'I assure you all. There will be blood.'

'There will be blood,' Caesar repeated slowly; as though teaching himself a new mantra.

I held me breath as it turned to Finnick's slot. Much like the parade, he had been showered in particulates, though this time, it seemed limited to his hair. Slicked back, it's looked like molten gold; gone was the darker bronze I knew.

His wide eyes quickly adjusted to the shock of seeing the audience, and took them in with rapt attention, grinning widely, even sharing out a few winks to unseen suitors in the crowd.

He was so handsome on that stage, but he was not the boy I knew.

'So Finnick, tell me, you must have been pleased with your score of 10?' Caesar winked.

'Yeah, pretty pleased,' he shrugged, a curious glint in his eye and a smirk about his lip.

'And what does that mean for you?'

'It means I have a better chance of getting back home,' he turned to the audience to accept their smattering of laughter, the majority of which seemed overtly feminine.

'So what does home mean for you?'

'The sea, the sand; fresh air like nothing you've ever experienced,' Finnick answered, a fond smile creasing his cheeks.

'Any special someone back home waiting for you?' Caesar lent forward, coaxing the answer from him, as though it were a precious secret between just the two of them.

'No' he shook his head 'no girls for me.' I felt a stone drop from within, from it's lodge within my throat it slipped to crash down into the pit of my stomach, ripping my heart from it's perch on the way. Did the years of knowing him suddenly become void? I was a friend at least, a best friend; a friend firm enough to earn some mention. I quelled such thoughts, I was being childish, but I was unable to shake the sense of unease. We'd been glued to each for months, but I felt him slipping away from me, not just in distance, but in mentality. It was as though he was transforming before my eyes; from that rough, gangly boy, always sopping wet but grinning; to this poised, well-greased young man. It had been only a few days, and yet the Games had already begun to make him unrecognisable.

'They all too shy? Well they don't make them quite like that over here.'

'They sure don't,' Finnick chuckled, my stomach a queasy mess as I saw him smirk at the adoring hordes of batted eyelids and air borne kisses.

'So back home is just fish and tridents?' Caesar winked.

'And tridents,' he confirmed.

'With that in hand, I'd say you're pretty untouchable.'

'Well I don't know if many of Capitol's finest would let them get at me,' it was a bold statement coming from a far too proud mouth. A hush fell about the audience before they erupted out into applause. The handsome boy had tickled their fancy and like churlish schoolgirls they rolled over themselves for him.

They were eating right out of his palm.

The two shook hands in a firm grasp and then he was gone. And I realized that would be the last time I saw him.

That was, until he was in the arena.

.

Sleep was a wicked adversary. After an exhaustive chase, it still evaded me, entwined in its camaraderie with my racing thoughts. Where was he now? Alone in some foreign room as I occupied his own at home? Desperately I wanted to reach out, extend my arms across the wooden floor, and know that out there, in the light of the inevitable sun, Finnick lay, arms outstretched as well; the two of us embracing the desperate space between us.

Sleep would not come, and so I never woke that morning. Like a ghost I continued without will to live. I rose like smoke from the wooden panels of his floor. No one called, but nobody needed to; I knew it was time.

Down the stairs I went, step by step, my feet no longer focusing on the floor underfoot. The world around me was mere meaningless sights and sounds that my mind began to bleach out. White noise polluted my ears and a sickness swelled in my stomach. Only the urge not to throw up crossed my mind; all other thoughts filtered out. The image of him, the last time I saw him, alone in that room without me, alone and faced with an impossible task.

The games were upon us, to be played out in all brutality before my eyes in mere minutes.

The room was familiar, I had sat in it before, watching that same old spot on the wall; but the jovialities of the run up to the games had gone. Panic, pure white hot panic replaced all senses.

The world was so still. So silent and smooth. There was an unnatural quality to the air, as though it was tainted, too musty, too filled with dust. The others around me, Odairs and Crestas alike refused to move, their eyes poised upon the projection as in rapidly shifting frames it showed a montage of previous games, all building up in speed until finally, we were present in the arena.

There they were, buried already in a watery grave. Numbers, counting down about the golden Cornucopia. Smaller and smaller still.

I couldn't see him.

_3, 2, 1…_

Caesar's words rang out in my ears once more as the final three numerals flickered on the screen.

_There will be blood_

_._

_And there we go, head first into the thick of it. I had a lot of fun writing the next two chapters of Finnick's games, and hopefully you'll like them too. If you enjoyed this chapter, or even loathed it, I'd love to here your thoughts. _


	10. Devils Turn To Dust

_I usually doze off in my therapy appointments, but I decided to put the extra few hours to use so have begun writing this in there too. _

_I also, under the pretense of artistically expressing my feelings, drew the 65th arena. My therapist didn't react so well to me drawing essentially a death arena, but who cares?_

_ It's on my tumblr account, my user name being **fox-meat**, but if you can't find it, just message me and I'll send you the link. I think it'll really help understand the location. I might also have the increase the rating on this story due to the **upcoming gory content** in this chapter (sorry, thought I should give a big, bold warning.) I'm really not sure what's acceptable for a T rating. _

_Thank you all so much for your kind comments, and I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. _

.

**X. Devils Turn To Dust**

.

The cannon rang out, a sharp trill, the last sound that many might hear.

They were off.

No time to think, only time to flee.

A mass of swarming arms, pumping legs; eyes wide, fuelled by something far more distinct that pure adrenaline; fear. Fear for their lives and limbs, fear for not only their imminent death; that was a given. It was a fear of how it might come about, how swift or how slowly it might be delivered and by whose hand.

The island the Cornucopia was settled on soon was bathed in blood. Grey, the hulking boy from District 2 had found the handle of a double-edged sword, deep in the heart of the golden metal curl. He was swift in dealing out an unsettling death to all too weak or stupid to cross his path. The girl from 8 went down first. She was heavy in her arms, heavy in her legs, heavy in her head as it rolled to the ground. Grey made no sound, and neither did his next two victims; both of District 3, losing their lives as their guts spilled out from their prepubescent bellies; like two gutted fish. Blaze kicked about their entrails in delight, a sickening grin of mirth settling upon his repugnant face.

The Careers were quick to claim the half a mile wide sand bank that formed the surrounding to the Cornucopia, joining them, the boy from 11, Hayes and a girl from 5, whose name I forgot.

The boy.

_My boy,_ where had he gone?

In the bloodshed I had lost sight of him, and lurched from my seat in search of him on that futile screen. Bodies littered the ground, nine by the cannon's count; two without heads, the rest in various different stated of puncture. But no bronze.

My heart rested for a short pause, my brain wildly thanking whatever gods my mind cared to grasp onto. I took the time, knowing he might be saved, to gaze upon the surrounding. The cameras, now appeased with the grisly first minutes, began to pan outwards; taking into it's the view this year's arena.

Finnick could not have been more suited. For this year, an atoll had been chosen for those twenty-three graves. A large lagoon, crystal blue, and about a kilometre and a half in diameter nestled at the heart of a ring shaped island. From what I could see, there was a ridge of mountain to the north, and a large forest on the sand bank to the east. The cornucopia lay on a separate island, now stained a deep red, as the blood seemed to leak out impossibly, far further than what those nine dead children's bodies could offer. The island, small and without any shelter, broke the ring; with short channels of clear blue water, a few hundred yards in width.

The Gamemakers plan soon became apparent. Though the atoll was wide, at least a few day walk from either end, there was little cover. One could simply look across and seek out the other tributes. Unless you could swim, it meant that stealth was vital, as the ring of land was the only possible option. That meant that the tributes would be forced to encounter each other if they wished to seek out food or water.

At the centre of the lagoon though, was a speckle of tiny islands, radiating out from its middle like scattered stones. They were each laden with lush green trees; dark and tall; night captured and contained in the middle of the day.

The cameras had now moved on from the view Caesar Flickerman had been debating; the shrill chime of his voice contributing to the myriad of questions playing out in my mind. They began to seek out the remaining fifteen tributes, as the sky began to turn pink. The sunset began blossoming upon the horizon, but the still hot eye did not seem to be in a hurry to disappear, and remained perched upon the waves, still wanting to view the spectacle before her.

A second group had formed, having escaped west off the Cornucopia and into the cover of the small crops of forest, at the eight o'clock point on the atoll's ring. Flickerman was quick to identify both tributes from District Six; one clutching at a weeping wound to her left flank, the girl, Nitya from 7 and the boy from 5. Nitya had scored a solid 10 in training, and in her hands she clutched two grappling knives. What had struck me was her resilience in the interview; how she had explained about the five brothers waiting for her back in her district. No wonder she had taken so quickly to gathering up the three others, all of whom were quite a few years younger.

Night finally began to fall, the sky alight with the dead children's faces, nine in total; nine set of misery, gutted and mauled.

.

_It was better than nothing. But far from than anything._

Heaven was sleeping but I could not.

It was like I had taken a breath and was still holding it in. I was drowning in my collected thoughts, the pressure of which threatened to burst from my ears like a blood bubble.

I was lost, lost in a sea of chime. Afloat in a river that bore me forth in ceaseless unrest, my weary bones had no place to sleep, no bed upon the shore or beneath the waves.

I was alone, quite so, again in his little matchbox room. One strike and the whole thing might set ablaze with my restrained curiosity, fuelled by my fear that I'd never known him for as long as I would have liked.

Inflections of pain rippled across my brow, from watching that screen for far too long. I laid my head upon the cool wooden floor, feeling the ridges and panels with the grafts of my skin. In the dark there was little to see, only inky shapes forming a thick soup of barely recognizable surroundings. The jawbones on the wall glinted slightly, the light of the moon a meal for those tiny teeth.

Whilst the majority of his room was tidy; more so out of lack rather than clutter, underneath his bed was a plethora of shadows in the dark. Scrunched up maps made a range of subterranean mountains, chasms created in piles of old baby shoes. My sight was aided by touch, my hand thrust out into the pitch undergrowth, my fingers running as though afraid of what was beneath, across years of built up dust.

It snaked about my fingers. Rough yet malleable in my hand, I drew out half a foot long length of rope from beneath his bed. In the faint light, the moons soft milk lapping over my hands, I could see the deep stain that had coloured the rope a blood red. A Cresta red.

All those months ago, back on the Cat Rock, making nets. It came back to me now; Finnick's soft chant as he wrapped his brain around nets; the frown that creased his brow, a mark of his unbridled confusion. I remembered jumping in the sea, feeling the water push the lungs from my air as we both screamed under the waves.

He'd been practising poacher's knots before dropping the rope beneath his bed, the ill formed loop distended and far too large. It brought a smile to my lips, their worn complexion having frowned for so long, felt broken. Running my fingers over the rough rope, the knot undid feebly in my hand, falling apart in Finnick's not quite practised technique.

My hands began to tremble and I knew the tears had come. I missed him. I hated to feel so feeble, curled up on his floor, a piece of old rope clutched in hand but my stomach was sick with worry. I'd seen all those children slaughtered, their throats ripped out; their young blood still smattered and smeared about my retinas.

The rope was thin and worn to my touch, and as an act of defiance against the overbearing thoughts, I focused my mind of the simple task of retying Finnick's failed attempt.

The knot blossomed in my hand; it was the one I'd taught him the day the crabs had come ashore.

I remember their speckled backs, and the gentle care Finnick had taken on turning the smaller ones over, as the waves had batted them about like play things. He'd been so careful, so considerate, his eyes focused on placing them back upon their feet. He'd caught my glance and captured my eyes with his lopsided grin.

I remembered the crabs. I remembered his sun-touched skin. I remembered the tightness in my chest, as though I too had been tipped upside down.

The knot was complete.

And I remembered him once again, whole, complete and safe within my thoughts.

_What happens to the boy, will he be destroyed?_

_And then what happens to the girl?_

_Whose mind will it unfurl? _

.

The second day brought on more horror for the Others; as Flickerman had dubbed them. Searching the island further, they travelled in a clockwise fashion, putting more distance between them and the Careers.

The cameras had taken delight at switching between the two opposing groups, as the Careers ransacked the Cornucopia for all its wealth, finding food and canteens of water.

The screen flickered over the island and settled on finding Lieve. She was unharmed it seemed, having settled in the dense cover of the eastern forest. She was careful not to eat any of the forest's plethora of fruits; sticking to a diet of ground roots and nuts cut from the bellies of small birds; half digested, but free of toxins.

Later in the day, the cameras still tracking her movements, she finally revealed her brutalized belly. A thick mess of open-mouthed wounds split her almost in half. It had been a marvel she had been able to make it that far. Perhaps they were only superficial, but whatever demon had grappled with the soft flesh of her stomach, they had refused to allow the blood to coagulate. She bled out freely upon the open forest floor, and let out a whimper of pain.

It didn't take long for the small parachute to come. It must have been the first of the games and landed squarely in her lap. A silent murmur of thanks played out across her lips, as though she knew the sender. Perhaps she did, for someone was certainly looking out for her.

She was about to apply the salve, when the cameras suddenly switched its feed.

The Others had made their way onto an outlying island, at ten o'clock on the atoll's dial. An orchestra of screams rang out, some recognizable as human; others were a twisted call of something far from the lungs of child. It was living and dying and the fatal play between them, only this time in a different language.

A couple of bodies burst out from the forest, bloodied and wide-eyed. They dived into the sea; two small children, their rail thin arms gesticulating wildly about in a bid to make it to the other shore.

Finally the last two of the their group emerged from the forest, Nitya running at full pelt, the boy from 5 pulled along in a bloody grasp. The cameras zoomed in. The room around me tensed, my mother letting out a tight gasp, a hand fluttering to her throat. I too felt tightness around my neck, squeezing the air from my lungs.

_The boy from 5 had no eyes._

Two mauled orifices offered no explanation for their silent blood soaked screams.

The horde of monkeys chasing behind them did.

A jet-black mass of clawed palms exploded out from the canopy, they were like shadows upon the sand. Shadows with rows of salivating teeth.

The boy's blind feet stumbled and he fell from Nitya's grasp, splaying out across the sand, their particles clinging to the hollows of his eyes. The monkeys converged on him, baring their glinting fangs, a second away from attack. Without pause for breath Nitya dove back into the cloud of black fur, ripping the boy out from the monkeys' mauling grasp. He stumbled onwards, hands outstretched, finally making it to the water; as with a gurgling scream, the monkeys consumed Nitya.

Her throat was ripped out first, blood spraying across the sand, her heart feebly pumping it from her deflating body. The purple-black blood caught in her mouth, bursting out from her lips, dribbling down her chin and cheeks to pool about in her hair, matching the colours of her once clean liver, pulled out by the monkeys deft hands.

Their fingertips were like lighting; sharp enough to cut glass, coated in a thick gelatinous gloss that made their small hands look molten. They tore at her sides and emptied out her heart, leaving only flesh and flowers, the bare bones of a girl who once was.

A single monkey, it's face and fur matted by the girl's last dregs of life, scampered towards to shore's edge, glaring out towards the three bobbing children. They were crying out, their tears running tracks down the slick red coat upon their cheeks. The ebb and flow of the ceaseless waves approached the monkey, lapping at its feet. Its howls met the children's, as it jumped about, as though it's foot had been burnt, convulsing in a sickening dance in the saturated sand.

Finally the cannon rang out.

.

I didn't want to watch any more. The games played out from behind my eyes; sleep offering no solitude. Akin to that small boy from 5, I wished to blind myself of the sights I had seen, the saturation of the screen far too real.

In two swift days ten had been slaughtered, and I did not wish to see the eleventh. Mama had become a whimper, my father a shout. My brothers were nowhere to be seen, but the Odairs remained glued to the projection, my own eyes joining their solemn watch. It soon became apparent that my brothers had gone out to fish; both handling a boat so as to trying to bring in enough for our two families. The port seemed to be as kind as the sea; as people took preference to buying from our stalls, my brothers returning each night with gifts of grief stricken apology from the district.

I took to spending the nights in his room, sitting in solitude, enjoying the silence; trying to drown out the sounds of those monkeys. The games had never affected me as such before. I was always able to view them with a sense detachment, but now they were all too real, sitting there with the Odairs.

I made a resolve to stop watching them, let the news come to me, but never be there to witness the monstrosity.

That was until Finnick emerged on the fifth day.

I almost did not recognize the small tanned shaped of his shoulders, as the cameras tracked his body, diving through the waves. Flickerman's commentary relived to us how he had come to be on the lagoon's few central islands. In the bloodbath, he had grabbed a pack, and catching sight of the water, had plunged straight in; setting his sights on the small shores. He had swam throughout the night and never looked back. Nothing followed him and he made camp on one of the islands; snapping trees to eat their white fleshy innards.

But now he was making his way back to the atoll, with a three pronged branch strapped to his back.

.

The fifth day brought further troubles for the Others. A third of them blinded and one of them mute, refusing all moisture and foods presented to her. They trekked hand in hand further north, taking no notice of the strange joints they crossed over. An island of such engineering must have been man made, and it took me by no surprise that it was comprised of parts. This became evident from the aerial view we were supplied, but I was not sure yet if any of the other spectators surrounding me had noticed.

It was made know to all though, when the segment the Others crossed over began to rapidly submerge. It was like a slice from a cake; the clean edges of the sinking part looked as though a sharpened knife had cleaved them.

This seemed to be happening all over the island, as Finnick changed his course towards the shore, as his destination began to descend from sight. This made no difference to him how ever, and I thanked the district we lived in and it's seas for blessing Finnick with such a strong stroke.

Another tribute though was finding great difficulty with the tides. The cameras zoomed in on the flailing boy, who began to sink only a few yards away from Finnick. The tribute from District 8 was a small boy, the youngest of the lot. He resembled an eagle chick, his hair a wild downy mess sprouting from his head that no product the stylists slathered on it could restrain.

He was easy for Finnick to rescue him from the water, as I watched his bronze head, slicked from the salt water breathe life into the little blue boy, just as he had done with me.

It was an attraction speaking another name. The Capitol loved that display, because the parachutes began to rain down, delivering sustenance and clean water to their odd companionship.

With hand clasped in soaked hand, they sealed their partnership, and for that night, I breathed a sigh of relief.

.

I had taken up residence on their couch and had become part of the revolving shifts his family took to watch for him. Neither family strayed too far from the shore; my father and brothers began to take out all three boats, so that the same catch could be caught whilst all the Odairs remained on the shore. My position on the couch became permanent, my vision only clearing to fixate on the swirling storm of pixels, playing out in clear sight.

Finnick and the boy, whose name I learned to be Cron, hid themselves from sight somehow, diving down into the same thick undergrowth that Lieve continued to conceal herself in. Like Finnick she had a supply of parachutes aiding her, though not as steady as the stream Finnick had received.

I would wake to find Kel next to me, his face locked onto the shifting sights of the projection. Under his breath he chanted his brother name, searching the scenery for sight of him. This was the third day Finnick was absent from the Games feed, and though no cannon had been sounded, it was equally worrying.

Finally, on the eleventh day, his face flickered onto the screen.

He was out on the sand once more, chasing after the hulking shape of Blaze. Cron was half buried in the sand, a few yards off; the boy from 11, Hayes, straddling his small waist as he bashed his head repeatedly upon the sand.

Finnick caught up with Blaze, and with his makeshift trident, speared him through the neck. I was not ready for that sight, as the shaft broke off in Finnick hand, and he proceeded to drive it in deeper to the already dead boys neck. Having found the trident now useless, he turned, his hands bloodied, his chest heaving, to then run towards the fighting boys.

He threw himself at Hayes, knocking him over, allowing Cron to roll over, still dazed, and stumble towards the forest. Hayes was down, and without his trident in hand, Finnick began to kick at his head; trying desperately to avoid the failing boy's swinging blade. Finnick didn't stop driving his foot into the side of his head till the pool of red had expanded out across the soil, making the shape of a curling fan of seaweed.

For a moment he seemed vacillant. Once again he dissolved into the timid nature of that boy, as though bending down to examine a crab. Was I the only one to see this, the only one to retain his good nature? And what would it be like for me to forget, and fatally disprove his past nobility. With Hayes now subdued, Finnick pinched his nose and covered his mouth, slowly throttling the boy.

My vision blurred with frustration. I did not recognize the boy before me, the boy who continued to torture the already dead boy. Only did it occur to me why when the cannon finally sounded. Finnick was prepared to kill, but only quickly, to draw out someone death would be to only draw out his own agony. I believed that some of the boy I knew still remained.

Until he looked straight at the camera, straight at us, straight at me. And winked.

.

I threw up all over the Odair's front steps, the churn of my already empty stomach spewing out from between my cupped hands. The splatter made a mess over my feet, but I continued to stumble out towards the sea, hoping saturation might soothe my distress. My feet were too slick to go on, and I fell in a heap, feeling for the first time in my life completely and utterly powerless. I could not reach out to that screen and clutch him back, nor could I reverse all the sins he played out to the siren spectators, like some performing monkey.

We were no longer humans. Just a scars upon the earth. And I wanted a scar that looked like him.

I wanted him. So, so badly. He was my boy, my friend and forever my companion. I felt too young to be admitting to such feelings but I didn't care. He had stirred something inside me and the pain that crawled out of me in a cry was a like to someone mourning a death.

The sick spilled out of me once more.

Light fingers played out across the nape of my neck, drawing my sweeping hair from the fallout of my misery.

Solesha Odair crouched behind me, her hands fluttering about my back in soothing circles. She was breathing into my ear, and like the soft flutter of wing beat, she let me inside her mind, whispering out the dribbling terror and their sweet, golden antidote.

'Are you disgusted by him?' her sad little chin bobbed about and I moaned through strings of saliva.

'That's not him,' I wailed. My thumbs dug into the sand, making a little pool for where my eye's hot saturation could dribble down and converge.

'He's tearing me apart. Taking little pieces.'

'If you've got visions of the past, hold them dear. They'll come back to you,' her hands we busy tracing the length of my spine in a pattern that stopped the waves of nausea that racked my stomach like an ill-fitting belt.

'I'm attached,' I admitted at last in words; sprawling out my deepest tangle of secrets to the cold little pebbles.

'And he'll come back to you. Someday.'

.

The Others didn't last the next day; they stumbled upon a field of mines and were blown sky high; the plume of ash blotting out the sun, sending the island into a short period of hazy darkness.

Like smoke, their lives were ephemeral and fleeting, dotted like crimson specks of beading blood on naked flesh. Their lives were momentary, and never to be claimed, forever in transition between being and dust.

I watched Cron die on the fourteenth day. We both did. Me and Finnick, apart, but present in the projected particles.

In a wordless death, his arms were thrown out as a deep red flower blossomed in his chest.

What burst forth was a monstrosity.

Cron had ingested some sort of insect, which had curled knots in his stomach, manipulating his poor little intestines until they sprawled out with the rest of his innards as the beast erupted from the soft flesh of his belly.

Finnick cried over the broken boy's body, his tears mingling with the first rainfall of the games. Blessed waters showered down from the tall canopy, making little pink pool about his fallen breast.

I stopped listening to the questions in my head, for I knew they were lies.

Once again the bronze hair boy was at home in my heart.

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_I think you can all tell I watched Alien recently. _

_I'll try and update as soon as possible, but I have a rule for myself not to post until the next two chapters have been written, so I'll see if I can work some magic and get it ready for my usual Friday update. _

_As always I adore your comments and reviews._


	11. Drunk On Your Noble Deeds

__Apologizes for not updating sooner, the weather in England is awful and affecting our internet. Thank you all so much for your commitment to this story so far; it makes me so happy every time I receive a review or a favourite, to think I might writing something for others to enjoy. If you have any constructive criticisms as well they would be so helpful, I only wish to improve, and I know this story is far from perfect. __

_As quickly as they commence, they end. _

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**XI. Drunk On Your Noble Deeds**

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I dreamt we were together. He was laughing on my pretty belly as we charmed our selves younger.

I knew he was alive for there was breath that plumed like smoke from his throat. We were like two magnificent dragons, our home the currents of the breeze or the shoals of the seas.

We were free and passed where we pleased, flying through the districts; watching the little ant like people pile about each other, driving deep scars into the land beneath us.

Suddenly and together, we were the only ones alive.

.

I awoke to news that none had died in the night; the stragglers from Districts 7 and 9 still out there somewhere. They would eventually succumb to the blades of each other.

Sleep evaded me like I had the plague. Days melded into nights, the rotations and contortions of the sun and her sister moon, once a light I relished in, passed by my bland eyes.

His movements orchestrated a cry within me; I could feel my vertebrae buckle and threat to break under the weight of such tension. With every hour past, I curled up tighter and tighter, my arms wrapped firmly around my knees, drawn up under my swallow chin, my skin only feeling the feeble light emitted from the projection.

I was on a precipice, an edge from which there was no return; I knew that now.

A feeling I was ready to deny sat between my shoulder blades and threatened to burst from me, just as I had seen that insect destroy Cron. I was mess, flaps of flesh sewn back together with a yarn made of Finnick's rough perseverance; only the emotion locked deep within keeping me together.

.

Lieve should have been dead by now, but under some hidden gods watch, she clung onto life. With the stubborn brutality she had always conducted herself with, she refused to give up; so she bound up her stomach and lay in wake.

That's how Finnick found her, tied up some tree, her stomach still bleeding, it's gaping mouth gagged by soiled bandages. A pile of parachutes lay at the tree's basin, but in her weakened state she could not reach them. She had resolved to wait out the war, and confront the final battle when necessary.

Finnick wasn't one for climbing; more used to being beneath sea level; but he grappled with the tree and made his way up to her. She wasn't in a good condition, but through bared teeth declared otherwise.

With difficulty, he untied the thick mess of knots that bound her to the tree and slung her over his back, her knuckles white when gripping onto his broad shoulders. They made their way to the forest floor and he helped her settle down amongst the roots.

Her stomach was still a matted mess. Whatever had struck her wanted her to bleed. Though the wound had healed through the layers of muscles, the upper grafts of soft flesh still wept superficially, enough to require continual bandage changes.

Together they survived, lent on one another and gave more than just protection. They were the last vestiges of home. They were lost in a lonely sea, unfamiliar waves that bore only strife. But in each other they smelt salt and the sting of hot sand.

They made a pact, painfully sealed in a knucklebone grasp; that they would not be the other's end. Rather if they might be the last two, they would separate and let themselves succumb to the horrors of the island's mechanisms.

They were both lost and found in each other. They had both been the backdrop of each other's childhood; the familiar figure in the crowd. Lieve's family had owned a stall near Finnick's, and they'd grown up with each other in the distance. Once a peripheral spectator; Lieve was now Finnick's last claim to humanity, to the only thing that defined him now; the Games.

Her token was not dissimilar to his own. A small pearl, almost insignificant against the milky scars upon her chest. She'd earned them after contracting the pox as a child; still possessing the same stubborn mentality then as she did now; having picked her skin until it scared.

Such a gift though could not have been Lieve's own. Pearls were a trade in our district, but the gold chain it hung upon was surely sourced from elsewhere.

'I don't expect to win. I need to win,' she had murmured, 'He'd waiting for me.'

'He's been helping you out?'

'I wish he hadn't, we both know what has to be done,' her voice was almost inaudible; Finnick avoided her gaze as though he hadn't heard her, but a pain flashed about his eyes that only her words could have elicited.

She mumbled a man's name at night.

.

They slept in the forest but both were prone to traipsing out to the water's edge. They went for days without seeing anyone else; from my own vantage point I could see that the Careers still stuck to the Cornucopia, fed on the riches of their blood spoils. Days past without sight of carnage, and a queasiness settled in my stomach, knowing that there was always a calm before a storm.

It came with white lighting teeth. It came from the water's edge.

She was only cleaning out her bandages, soaking her brutalized body. Her back was turned to the sea, only caring for what enemies the land might host.

The mouth emerged from the water without a sound. It caught Lieve from behind, saturated teeth biting down into flesh; it's jaw wide enough to encompass her entire waist. Her cry caught in her throat, as it's strangle paralyzed her body and she slumped into the tide. A plume of blood erupted under the water; Lieve's head surfacing for enough air to form a call. It had already sampled her soul.

By the time Finnick made it to the shore, another shark had converged on her. Intent on preserving whatever life she might have left, Finnick grappled at her arms, pulling her clean of the water, and clean of her lower half.

Her right leg was a blood pulp, her left completely severed along with the large part of her young hips. Their meal removed, the pair of sharks, monstrosities in their size vanished as quickly and as silently as they came, the froth of their attack dying down in the placid waves.

A whimper began between her teeth and shook down the length of her spine, its hilt jutting out from where her crushed hip once was. Adrenaline and the ebb of death stilled her severed body, her shoulders now cradled in Finnick's lap, his blood soaked hands soothing back her hair, pulling it from the slip of her wet lips.

Her voice hitched, and broke forth.

'You'll win this right?'

'Lieve,' Finnick keened, his face contorted with the pain she no longer felt.

'No, promise -' a spew of blood trickled out from the brim of her mouth, the last of her words coming clean, '- you need to tell him. It was always him.'

Her fingertips, light and slick with her own blood, dappled about his cheek, pulling him closer.

A word, delicate as a bubble formed on her lips, burst forth for only Finnick to hear.

A name, lost now to the bloody tides.

.

The final parachute came that night and the Games immediately changed.

The trident was deadly in any hand, but in Finnick's it was brutal. His still stained hands clasped about it's shaft, Lieve's blood imprinting upon it's golden skin, her final grasp onto her lost district; the lost love that now urged him onwards.

He sat with her body all day, not caring that he might be sighted. He sat there until the craft came; her face saturated with tears and caked blood, the moisture rising up from her pores, just as her body did as it was awkwardly lifted away.

He cried for her, for the reality of it all, for the impending death that might await him. How would he approach such a foe; an empty handed child, shivering and alone?

Such a match was equalled with the trident. Glowing against the night's sky, it floated downward, languid in the breeze, as though weightless and without need to be anywhere. He caught it in one hand, and instantly his eyes changed.

And for the first time, I had hope, lodged in my throat, lodged in my stomach. A hope that my boy might finally come back to me.

He kissed her dead forehead and let his tears mingle with her own. He took the token from around her neck, and let it hang with his own; two teeth bared against his heart.

He bid her empty grave farewell and receded into the forest.

He emerged much later, a net in hand, finely woven and made of a forest offered twine. He'd barbed it too and had left a hold for weights about its edges. He'd find stones later to aid his catch, and so now, with it pressing his trident to his back, he silently slid into the sea, disappearing from sight.

.

Was it so wrong to now possess some hope? It was feeble and faint, but burnt softly.

Selfishly I wanted him alive for my own. I missed his mannerisms and the way he made me feel, but also because the thought of his lifeless body seemed utterly incomprehensible.

But it was unthinkable though now for a new reason. I couldn't imagine my life without him. I was so entwined with him; I thought of him as another, far better half of my being. If he died, surely I'd cease to be as well. He no longer retained the status of brother or friend, but of something far less defined, but far stronger.

It was something I did not want to admit; out of fear it would not only never be reciprocated, but never come to fruition.

Finnick had to survive, indefinitely. I didn't care for what state he might come out as, mauled like Lieve or blind like that little boy. I needed only the faintest touch of him, but the thought was not enough.

He had changed before my eyes. He'd gone in a boy, but now through rites of blood had aged.

I was watching him become a man.

.

He emerged from the water, a dark form against the sand, looming up behind her as she sharpened sticks. He was noiseless and poised, the lapping of the waves covering his tracks, the sun aiding his attempt by throwing his shadow behind him. Wren was completely unaware as the heavy net fell upon her head. The weights drew down to bury themselves in the sand and the barbs caught in her hair and ripped at her exposed skin.

She struggled like an animal under his net, screamed out like a pinned bird, her hoarse cry broken, already defeated.

She expected her fate, looked him square in the eye as she kicked and lunged about under the twine trap. With a set jaw and tensed arms she embraced the trident.

It hit her in the heart, blood arcing up to touch his face, caressing his cheek with its dappled fingers. Her face turned puce as she struggled beneath the net, writhing about in the tainted sand. Her silent contortions were a sickening dance, but there was nothing left to do but wait, wait for the blood to fill her lungs and drown her still beating heart. Her hair sprawled out, a black mass in the sand, speckled with the blood as it bloomed from her chest, an unfurling flower, bloody in its fresh petals.

She went out with a gurgle, blood filling her mouth as she spat out at him. The convulsions ceased and at last she was still.

She died with open eyes, watching him as he lifted the net up from her tangled form. He closed them softly and touched her hands to move them from their angles, back to embrace her bloodied chest. He straightened her legs too, relaxed her limbs before the stiffness of rigamortis set in and forever framed her in such a chaotic pose.

With a sun turned face, his eyes blinked and gaped, his mouth forming incoherent prayers that he might be delivered from such an act. He was sorry, I could see it in his face, but that was not enough. If he was to take her life, it must be for reason. He had to continue now, honour her death with his own survival. He was drunk on her blood, seeking out to kill her friends, kill them for his rite to return to a sickened reality.

He was now hard of sin, her blood marking his transformation. All that was Finnick had left him, to let forth a hidden nature, a will to survive on all counts and by any means.

.

He found her next, a speck against the glaring sun. They found each other.

She ran and he dutifully followed, the barer of ill tidings.

Orchid hid within the Cornucopia, her bone white hair stained with dirt and grime.

He approached her slowly, already having noticed her limp state. Unlike Wren, the net didn't grace her form, instead held limply in his hand, still soaked in red.

Her hands were empty as she fumbled round in the corner, her splintered nails bleeding out as she clawed at the smooth walls, trying to find a purchase that might be her escape.

'You have a choice,' she cried, drawing in heavy breaths.

His shadow was upon her, the darkness grappling at his face, and hiding its contortions from view.

'_I don't.'_

She ran, ran out from the grasp of his shadow, past his three-pronged form in an attempt to break free of her fate. Her legs, once a length to be admired, now were as bent as a fawn's. She stumbled and broke, her ankles bruised and weakened in her flight.

She almost made it to the water's edge, almost.

The trident hit her square in the back, cracking through her spine with force, its barbs bursting out from between her breasts. As though time had been slowed; perhaps a cruel trick for the Capitol's delight, her body contorted in the air, her back arching forwards almost impossibly. Her hair caught about her neck, and she crumpled to the ground, faceless. Unlike Wren, she passed on like a snuffed out candle, a quick burst to deliver her on, only the curling plume of blood to give her still body motion.

He was careful in retrieving his weapon. He checked her pulse, and turned her over, staring her in the eye, contact with a dull glance. With wiped hands, he moved the hair from about her face and with two fingers, slowly closed her eyes. If it were not for the brutal triptych of puncture wound on her own perfect chest, you could have been fooled into thinking she was asleep.

The second cannon of the day rang out, but was yet to be met with a third.

The darkness descended in pearly tones; but as the sun's blind eye closed, only two of four lives had been taken.

.

Grey would be the last to go, that was a predetermined indefinite. His bulk from the start had singled him out and already I knew he would be Finnick's last.

Whilst Grey was washed and well fed; Finnick was flagging, worn with his deeds.

They waited till morning, on opposite sides of the golden isle and as Finnick woke, the already moving form of Grey lurched towards him.

I had seen those knives gut children, and with arms wrapped about my middle I prayed that Finnick would not befall a similar fate.

Finnick rose, still groggy with sleep, determination breaching out from his confusion. With sloppy hands he grappled with the still slumbering trident. Grey approached with a manic grin splayed across his face, half his mouth drawn up in a grimace that could only be described as mad. They met as though play-fighting, weapons as though wooden, as they darted to and from one another, both weary in their arms as they sluggishly danced. Grey's knives were kicked from him hands, burying themselves deep into the isle's infinite skin.

The trident flew out, to dive between the waves. They were both unarmed now, two boys writhing about in the sand, hands at each other's necks, nails and teeth their only weapons.

Finnick made a break for it, to the freedom of the sea, his golden form disappearing into the water. Grey followed him without resignation and the two boys became hidden from sight.

All breath seemed to be held in; as though we too were submerged. I couldn't move, paralyzed, I felt the crush of tension around my ribs, as though a large hand was attempting to squeeze my innards out of my mouth.

A canon rang out, slow and forlorn, but revealed no aspect of the victor. Both boys remained beneath the waves.

Shoulders broke the surface, the face still hidden. I dared not breathe.

Slowly, with the tender undulation of the strangely calm water, the body turned; it's chest a sickening mess of punctures.

A barb had caught Grey's cheek, drawing up half a smile; even in death he still held that lopsided grin.

.

_Their winner was bloated with seawater, as though he had gulped it down._

_Perhaps he had tried to drown himself; perhaps the sea had pushed in. _

_Either way his body was lifted up for all to see, crumpled and loose, like a broken doll. _

_His eyes were closed, in a bid perhaps to wake from this dream. _

_Fourteen years worn in fourteen marks upon his chest. _

_The Games had their champion. _

_The district had their winner. _

_The father had his son. _

_But I did not yet have my boy_

_._

_._

_Did you like my version of Finnick's Games? I enjoyed writing it; a challenge to still convey the motions of the story line, but in a way that was more interesting to read. _

_It's my birthday tomorrow, and I would adore it if you've just read or favourited or alerted this, to gift me with a little comment, review or criticism. It would be a true delight. _


	12. Keep your Distance, Lest I Fall in Love

_Sorry for not updating sooner, but things have been difficult lately. I'm currently in treatment for anorexia, and am in the process of transferring hospitals. It's a poor excuse, but the only one I have at the moment._

_So I've written a big ole' chapter, so I hope you enjoy it. Dramatic things be a'happening! Thank you for all your reviews and the constructive help too, I've tried to improve upon your comments, so please keep them coming, they really do help me and mean so, so, very much to me. _

.

**XII. Keep your Distance, Lest I Fall in Love.**

.

The air felt dusty, as though the world outside had been still for a very long time. Every time I took a breath I waited for the weight to fall back on me.

He was safe, but not yet home. And I felt something.

But that was better than nothing, surely.

The Games had ended two days ago, and I was still storing air in my lungs, baited breath waiting for a shattered exhalation. One that might break the world around me; that suddenly some other boy might have surfaced from the arena's bloodied waves.

My arms were bruised from regular reality checks, the skin pinched purple from my necessary reminders, goosebumps from the cold sea air around me. I stood upon a high sand bank, looking out expectantly to sea, as though Finnick might rise from the waves at any moment. He had not yet returned, and I did not know when to expect him.

I made my way along the little cove, one further out along the shore from my home. It was delicate in size, soft sand dunes like lips, whispering out the cool bubble of undulating waves. Tall grass swayed in the light breeze, moving softly without resistance into a coerced dance.

A figure sat amongst those stalks, and I carefully padded over to meet them.

Thorin's legs were quite possibly longer than I was. They lay stretched out over the lip of the dunes, smoke rings pluming from his full lips as he dragged on the small wrap of burnt grass.

He paid me no attention as I sat down next to him, settling myself an uncomfortable foot away, not wanting to fully intrude. Though no matter what distance I strayed at, I could still see I had entered his quiet world of furrowed brows and unwavering gaze, fixed out upon the horizon.

I'd known his presence all my life. He'd been there first in the streets and then on the screens. He'd won his games at the tender age of thirteen, in a bloody tirade that had seen him slaughter his adversaries in age order. There had always been a brutality to him, but an intelligence that came with it; a cunning hidden beneath his perfected Capitol veneer. He looked ragged though in the morning air. His chin was speckled with unkempt stubble and his hair bedraggled, as though he had pulled and yanked at it.

The man I'd seen so often swollen with conceit looked lost. He had been a man who had commanded a room, held onto legions of adoring fans; the toy of many and the master of none.

"Dammit I loved that girl," he finally spoke. I examined the look upon his face, and that scowl between his eyes had been replaced by genuine remorse.

_Lieve._

It suddenly blossomed within my mind.

A secret kept in hushed touches; now scattered out like dust. Like tiny fireflies they'd danced about each other under pretences that we'd all been too disinterested to see; blinded by the leap in age and the gleam of the games to believe true human emotion could exist. How could something so pure stay resilient in the centre of such barbaric happenings? The feelings had weathered the storm whilst she had not.

He was the glance she had been searching for in the crowd, the name she had called as she had slept. The parachutes. Gods all those parachutes, all sent from him. He had been her one and only hope.

And he had watched her die like a slaughtered lamb.

"I refused and he put fucking sharks in the water," his voice cracked with the weight of his words.

"Refused?" I asked softly.

"The Capitol and their sluts," he chuckled manically, spitting out the word _sluts. _

"You don't have a clue," he shook his head at my shocked face. I couldn't restrain the concern playing about in my eyes.

"Would it be better if I did?" I questioned. I gathered from the intonation of his voice what he was talking about; whispers bourn out for years in the salt stained air had detailed my young mind of the liberal lives of the Capitol. Though there was a darkness in his voice to concern me that it had touched him too.

"She didn't either," he murmured, more smoke erupting from his plump mouth.

"She died saying you name," it suddenly occurred to me. The word that had bubbled upon her blood stained lips had been his name. She'd called out to him with her last gasps of air, and it constricted in my lungs the anguish he must have felt watching her die.

"She died in pain," he spat, pounding the sand with his fist.

"She died quickly," it was all I could say, for I was drained of all other reasons. Her death had been a brutality.

"She had Finnick," I tried to reason feebly.

"You're right, I owe Odair that much. Nothing more," and with a dry chuckle, "He'll soon take my place."

"What do you mean?"

He pressed a smoky finger to my lips.

"Shh, I wouldn't want to spoil the fun." But there were still tears in his eyes.

"What's your name?" he looked me in the eye for the first time.

"Annie Cresta," I replied rather curtly.

"Well Annie Cresta, you hold onto that boy. He'll need someone to live for," he smiled weakly.

"He has to live for her. For -" he struggled to produce her name; those syllables weighted with barbs that threatened to cut up the lips she had once touched.

"But won't you?"

Clarity flashed in those once dull eyes.

"Not any more."

On that he rose; his once limber body seeming heavy with built up smoke. It poured from his nostrils, as though he was some sort of dragon, his face matching the hurt broiling within. I watched him as those long legs carried him away without a word, without a whisper.

He disappeared between the tall swathes of grass, not even the lingering smell of smoke to mark his presence. It had already been borne out to sea; to where some secret place held his lost reason and resonance.

I suppose I should have followed him, should have talked to him, given him some comfort, but our hearts led the way. None of those mattered to him, or me anymore.

Thorin's body washed up on shore two bloated days later.

.

I was relieved for his life, for his safety. But as selfish as it was, I was happy for myself too; that I might be able to look upon Finnick's face once again. The new feelings that had grown in his absence quarrelled within me, but for the first time both my heart and head agreed with each other.

Finnick was coming home; my life would again be complete.

The seaport was ablaze with his arrival. The night was alight with song and praise, the sky strung up with all the lanterns we could muster, people out upon the streets to welcome him home. The night was warm with the undulating flutter of people's throats, as a world of words were passed about in place of food. Bodies pressed together in the forum, a circle of dancers had languidly taken up keep in the centre of the large cobbled floor.

And the boy I wished to see most was readily gobbled up by the crowd as soon as he disembarked from the train; the calls of the district exploding like a gaggle of gulls.

I hardly saw him that night. The glitter of the Capitol seemed to have soaked into his skin, for he radiated a charm, a delight that I'd never seen before. He seemed so polished, so steady and calm, yet behind the eyes monumentally different. The few glances I did grasp of his face, as his was passed about the party like a newborn meeting the town, I saw no physical differences, apart from the new strength in his jaw and the lightness of his hair.

I felt quite apart from the heat of the celebrations. I wandered in and about the crowds, weaving between bodies, reserving myself to the fact I might not see him tonight; but the repeated utterance of his name was enough to counter any want for tangible touch.

I was quite ready to slip away, when a hand silently slipped into mine, lacing our fingers together and drawing me through the crowd, its owner unseen.

I could feel their warmth, the roughness of their firm touch, safe and determined. We slipped between bodies, following the flow of the crowd like two light fish, allowing the current to carry us forth. The slam of shoulders sent me crashing forwards, knocking suddenly into my guide.

Finnick's face finally found mine as he looked down upon me; our hands still entwined, our bodies pressed so much so that I could feel the race of his breathing as our gaze reunited.

"Finnick," I whispered hurriedly, pushing him back into a darkened alley, scared the crowd might swallow him up again and I'd lose him forever.

I couldn't help myself; I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him fiercely. It felt so good to hold him again, that well-worn warmth, the breadth of his shoulders that I'd missed so much. I was wrong; he had changed physically. He was no longer the body of a boy. The games had transformed him, made his skin hard and his hands rough, though not unfamiliar; only more mature.

His hands enveloped mine and slowly we were drawn in by the rich waverings that filtered in from the party. We revolved together, a smooth rock that resembled I suppose a dance.

I could feel his heart beat in his chest, and in his neck too as I rested my head beside it. We were there in the still, together at last.

"Does this make us even?" He murmured into my hair.

"Not even close," I whispered back.

We stayed there swaying in the alley for what felt like an age, the feeling of his warm breath against my neck, his hand at the small of my back. It was rather an embrace than a dance, our arms about each other, holding so tightly, as though the world might rip us apart again.

"I missed you." I felt it rather than heard, sensing the vibrations of his throat.

"I missed you too." There was no need to hold to truth back from him. It felt so surreal. For one that I had ever even known this boy, the boy who championed the Games and the boy who held me now. It felt like a bittersweet dream that against all of the odds he was here. I knew he was broken, there was something profoundly cracked within him; I felt it echo within me too. But the rich warmth of his hold filled me up, threatening to make me burst and let loose the true extent of what I felt.

"I missed you the most," his honesty was startling, and I felt a warmth like pooling honey inside me as he said that.

"You don't have to anymore." He'd opened up my little heart, but I couldn't resent him for that. Finnick was the first person to elicit such feelings in me, feelings I was finding harder and harder to repress and ignore.

He held onto my hand almost possessively and I could feel almost all of his weight upon me, as though at last he was slumping. The Captiol's golden boy was crumpling in my arms; all that play for the cameras dissolved in the dark.

Here was his chance. To tell me what I wanted. His chance to tell me what he wanted too. That perhaps our hearts might hold the same intent.

"Your hair's gotten darker," he whispered, his breath playing across my face as he drew closer and closer.

I felt the air catch in my throat; I stood so irresolute, my eyes wavering as they latched onto his own. He'd never been so close, and I'd never been so frightened. Not of him, but of the world around us that threatened that tiny thing we had between us. The brush of his lips against my cheek was enough to finally cement his definite presence and the failing of my heart.

And then, suddenly he was gone, snatched back by the hungry crowds, only the light tremble in my now empty hand to remind me he had ever been near.

.

I traipsed back to the house by myself, taking in the quiet of the night as a cool relief. I could still hear the cries of the parade as it played out to the ink black sky. The seaport look as though it was ablaze, the thousands of lanterns strung up in celebration. Celebration of not just the survival of one, but the promise of a years worth of food, to feed our children's bellies full.

There was actual adulation, for out from under the oppression tolled upon our people, for one short evening we had definition, a role, and a champion for all of us to embalm our pride on. We had beat the Captiol's games; he had come out alive; though I feared still broken.

I had stayed in that dark alley for quite some time; lost not in thought, not in some constant internal replay or need to catch my breath. I just felt so empty, and yet so full. As though I'd been erased and redrawn, a light switched on to finally ignite my existence.

The waves still steadily crashed across the beach as my bare feet met its wet sand. That had remained a constant. Neither the Hunger Games nor the Capitol could restrain the tides. It never stopped, never ceased. It was there before my birth and would be there long after my death. However close that might be. I felt a shudder pass down my spine. How many times had I seen Finnick narrowly escape death? I might have been sitting here in mourning, and that thought disturbed me deeply. Yet still the waves would carry on, not noticing a death, the steady heart beat of the sea; when I remembered, the hearts of 23 children now longer moved.

I felt a curiosity about me. This was the view I'd looked out to so forlornly for the past couple of months that it felt so strange to look at it in any different way.

I was trying to find an emotion that I could no longer deny. I was holding onto a secret, one that had swelled in my chest, but had not yet been fully realized.

It blossomed upon my lips, the winds breathing it in.

"_I'm in love with you Finnick Odair,_" I whispered out to the empty ears of the sea.

And for the first time I believed it to be true.

.

Waking was far easier now, knowing he was safe. An even greater gift as the mornings past until the one that marked another year chalked up upon my age.

Fourteen, a number my life had yet to envelop in its discourse. But here I was, a year older than last, but in no way remarkably different. Fourteen years upon this earth, two renewals of my soul, two revolutions of those barbaric games. Would I chance a third?

My hair was longer than last year; it's length now snaking past my shoulder blades. Not that I had noticed its growth, only was it when the winds began to pick up, did I find it a nuisance. But it made me feel older, slightly gentler than the gawky image of an elongated child I had in mind. It had grown darker too; I only recognized this from the difference between the lightly blonde tips and the burnt gold roots. It was a subtle change, but one of the few I possessed.

Stretching my legs beneath the sheets in an attempt to shake the grip of sleep, I could feel how sinewy they still were. My thighs were insubstantial as always, but my days spent swimming gave them slight strength.

I'd been swimming by myself a lot lately. With Finnick's return I had once again taken to the water; but I had expected to see him too, surfacing, slick with salt. He was still on the Victory tour on his duties as a champion and I was still alone.

I knew I shouldn't expect it, but I was still surprised to find no boy outside my front door. A small box gave an ill reply. District 8's stamp, tiny and smudged was printed in blue ink on the edge of the box. Finnick had been in that district weeks ago; had he the fore planning to send it so early on? It carried the bruises of the postal system; the sight of which was strange to my eyes. Parcels were a rarity in the districts, though not unheard of. Rather they were large delivery of bait from the lower districts, or perhaps pieces for those wealthy enough to possess machinery.

I felt almost wrong opening up the box, to rip into its paper flesh, but I did so out of curiosity and was gifted with a cascade of ribbons. I had not expected such velocity as they tumbled out; a multitude of colour that not only belonged to the sea, but of regions further still. They fell out upon my lap and finally I made sense of all their swirling hues.

Finnick had tried to capture our island in its simplest form. These long strips; threads and the off cuts of disused fabric made up a matted weave much like the forest floor. The white bone of the trees, the slick red of the sun touches caverns; even the speckled dance of his token. Without further decision I set out in search for my sender, or at least another who owned that name, leaving my little box of ribbons carefully on the windowsill.

The Victor's Village was a ring of boxy white houses. They were all identical in structure, making it almost impossible for me to tell which one might be the Odairs. The compound was silent, a morning hush falling upon the residents, as the light filtered in through the cloud cover; dappled reflections playing about the roofs. A small fountain gurgled on the mound of grass that lay at the circle's centre. The imposing figure of a large salmon fish arched out, it's stern eyes almost defensively glaring at me, the poor, impoverished intruder; I had not paid my toll of blood to enter such a neighbourhood and probably never would. Its eyes were frighteningly human; but what was even more curious was the salmon's breed. Salmon was not known in our region; it was found far further north; in the mountains surrounding the Captiol. Perhaps it had been a mistake, but I though it might rather be a tangible reminder of the Capitol's constant presence; the Village, a gift to our most gracious sacrifices.

"Oi Cresta!" I heard called above me.

Squinting my eyes against the glare of the early sun I saw a shadow upon a roof, and for a second my chest tightened, hoping it might be Finnick. The two eldest Odair boys were sitting above, blotting out the sun's rays with their bulks as they beckoned me upwards.

Finnick and I had been climbing before; much like swimming it required the combination of all four limbs. Unlike diving though, climbing filled your limbs with weight; your mass dependant on the strength of your wrists, your arms and shoulders.

The Odair's new house was smart; large by our district's standards with painted white slat walls. The four tall wooden pillars supporting the roof's front gave the impression the house was leaning forwards, as though leering for approval, or perhaps smugness; the blood of too many children behind that lacquer.

I scaled it tentatively, not wanting to make an impression upon the freshly painted walls. I spied the other boy's previous ascent; their muddy handprints and the scrapes of their knees and feet, and so followed their path upwards.

The view was impressive as I settled myself next to Thul, watching Kel try and chuck shards of shingle into the fountain. The morning sun was beginning to breach over the distant hills and the sight was breathtaking. With dewy fingers the early child caught our eyes and held them still with her soft glow. Like angel hairs, tiny filaments of light, the smattering of hexagonal shapes refracted out across the glare of the rising sun.

"It's lovely up here," I commented.

"Yeah the house is nice," Kel remarked, a fierce grin across his face that betrayed his true liking of it.

"How do you like it Thul?" I asked, turning to the older boy, who had been weaving a short plait of sea twine between his fingers.

"Mother likes it," he smiled "She's planning a garden. You could help her," his gaze returned to the weave.

"The house must feel so much larger." I inhaled, taking in the full freshness of the new air and the expanding view.

"It actually feels fuller now that-" Thul replied softly.

"- Finnick's home," Kel finished his sentence for him, a warmth filling his face.

"We don't need it, but it's nice." Kel reasoned with a shrug, letting loose another shard, watching it arch across the compound, to miss the fountain and glance off the salmon head.

"We have family. And that really is enough."

.

He didn't appear for another month, the Victory Tour keeping him far from sight.

His 15th birthdate approached and I readily anticipated a disappointment concerning his appearance. I was becoming more and more greedy for his presence, wanting him home and not so far away.

The day drew to a close and we celebrated without him at the Odairs' house; a meal heavy with his favourite dishes, their simplicity seeming strange in the new grandeur of their dining room. We bid them farewell and travelled back home, my tired body carried in shifts between my brothers. The lull of their step beckoned on sleep and by the time we made it home, and I was lain, fully clothed, in bed, I was fully ready to fall asleep.

But something kept me still within the fragile confines of consciousness.

That damn boy was plaguing my mind again. I resented him almost, for making me feel that way. So weak and powerless under his gaze. I'd once been so self sufficient, but now he was the once in control of my feelings. I could never hate him for too long, only once apart, that small window of time where I learnt to breathe once more.

I felt as though I was drowning, drowning in disbelief. Disbelief at how I felt for a boy I had once disliked for his arrogance and self-importance, but those qualities that I had once written him off for had transformed. I saw intelligence in his eyes as that handsome jaw of his would speak in rapt concentration, fixing me and only me in his gaze. But how could I be so stupid, so foolish to think that he would like me, the scabby kneed wisp who looked more like a drown cat than a growing girl.

I was still a child to him, the girl he'd grasped onto in that cold waiting room, the girl with algae in her hair, the girl he'd laugh at but never love.

I was selfish, wasn't I? For thinking of him in such an objective way, but I couldn't help it. I should be glad I had him alive and home, not a slaughtered mess upon that arena floor. Loving him was hard. The word was like a pearl, held as a secret to my heart.

And then there he was, at my window, grinning like some fool. Like some apparition of a night devil that my invading thoughts had summoned.

"Fancy seeing you here" he greeted.

"I was about to go to sleep. I have a good mind to push you out," I pouted.

"No you weren't. Come on let me in before I fall," he grinned, to which I just shrugged.

"When did you get back?"

"Just now," he sounded out of breath, as though he had just run from some great distance.

I sat back down upon my bed and crawled under the covers, wanting to fall back into that lull, fall back and take Finnick with me.

I felt the sheet shift beside me as Finnick wormed his way next to me.

I scrunched up my face at him, feeling his smile radiate in the dark.

"It's been too long," he murmured "You and me."

"I don't like that," I agreed with a small, shared smile_. __  
><em>

"Me neither."

"Well then stay, here, in my bed," I proposed. He chuckled and shifted beside me, looping his arm above my head, so that I might rest against it, drawing him closer.

"Sea otters again?"

"Bed otters more like," I giggled and he joined in, the two of us living in each other's reverberations.

"You know I dreamt about you," his laughter fell silent, and he spoke softly, as though his words were some precious secret only I could hear.

"The whole time," he breathed, his chest filling with tense air against my own. We seemed to lay there for an age, our eyes relearning the nuances of the others face.

"I dream about you too," I finally whispered, only to realize that Finnick's eyelids had fluttered shut and the boy before me was asleep.

I felt my own eyes grow heavy with their fill of his sleeping face, but it felt too much like some surreal dream to have him next to me to allow myself to fully drift off.

He owed me. This slumbering boy.

I decided that such a debt would keep him close, bind him to me in contract.

He was in my debt and firmly in my heart, and I fully intended to keep him there.

.

_How was that? Finally the feelings are getting some momentum!_

_All your reviews and alerts and favorites are absolutely darling and I would love to hear how you're finding this story. _


	13. You're No God

_I really do adore writing this, so thank you all for taking the precious time to read it, it means the world. And if you've hung on for this long, you'll be very happy with all the loving in this chapter!_

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**XIII. You're No God.**

**.**

We lay in his bed watching the sun come up. I could feel the light touch of his fingertips down my arm, connecting the invisible traces between my freckles. It wasn't anything more than an embrace of comfort, both of us not quite believing the presence of the other. He felt like a ghost about me, as though I couldn't let myself believe he was there unless it was some sort of cruel dream.

His corona of bronze hair looked as though it were ablaze, tiny filaments glowing with the early morning light. I could crawl inside those eyes, and he in mine; to chance what he might see, to even steal away all those tainted thoughts of killing.

His mouth could have been powdered, for his words were sugar to my ears, tiny whisperings of sea currents and star constellations. There were treasures in his words and they were all for me. I felt overly fortunate, for being blessed with such feelings, feelings I had never felt before. He made me want to reach out, to kiss those lips in some brash uncharacteristic motion. Perhaps they tasted just as sweet as his words.

It was a strange love. Though unrequited, I was not pained at such a status. I was quite content just to be in his presence. I felt no overt undulations of my heart when he looked at me; for years I had met his eyes. There was no elated pounding of my chest at every feather-light touch, or shared glance.

My heart was full rather of dulcet joy. We had a life together, and it felt like it could go on forever and ever. To hear his voice come through my window, from out of my sight, from anywhere, was enough. To know he was mine, and not dead beneath the waves in a funeral shroud. He humbled me, was the other, better half of my being; even if he didn't know it.

I was living in moonlight. And though he was not, I felt infected. Infected by spores of some wonderful stardust, that filled my chest with warm content. I was smiling inside. And that was enough.

_My little lion man._

"I'm proud of you Finnick," I whispered, wanting him to know. For part of my heart swelled not just from love, but also of an odd courage, a strange satisfaction and pride from just looking at him. My heart was overjoyed just at the thought of his breath, at watching his chest rise and fall slowly. And knowing it would continue too.

"Why?" He whispered "I ki-," the thought of such deeds lodged in his throat and refused to go down. He closed his eyes and prayed never to open them again. I could see it almost, the smattering of blood that continually played out in his retinas, the images that would never cease, never go away. The pain he'd lived. The pain he'd inflicted.

"I killed five. Five children," his voice was so hoarse it almost smelt of smoke. It was the first we'd spoken of the games.

"You survived," my hand slipped into his, my fingers giving direction to his own, squeezing them tightly, pulling him away from wandering too far into the plains of dark thought.

"It was not your fault," I said firmly.

"Think of all the lives I destroyed." His thoughts were being mislead.

"And I think of all the lives I would have despised if you had not _survived_." I stressed the word again.

"I have to go." He rose from the bed sharply, pulling the thin covers from me and leaving me cold. He glanced back and his face softened.

"Sorry Annie. Really I am." His fingers raked through his hair, sending out sleepy tuffs of bronze.

"You're okay."

"I have to go away again," he shook his head.

"What do you do in the Capitol? Sorry if that's intruding," I didn't want to press him more than necessary, I just wanted him to be comfortable enough to talk to me.

"It's really silly actually," he smiled briefly.

"What?" I sat up to face him.

"Parties mostly, they're ridiculous. People like meeting a-" he hesitated on the word, as though it was too foul tasting "- a champion."

"Well that doesn't sound too bad," I shrugged weakly.

"Yeah, I guess so. All I have to do it have my photograph taken over and over. And I guess if that's it, I can stand doing it for any god knows how many years.

A brief memory flashed across my mind _"The Capitol and their sluts." _Smoky fingers and sea grass _"He'll soon take my place."_ The beautiful, well-worn eyes, lost on Thorin's face.

What could he have possibly meant? Finnick was talking of photographs and pleasantries, yet I feared Thorin's words had greater gravity to them.

"I'm like a dancing monkey." Finnick voice broke through my daze, yet I was still left with a queasy mess of a stomach.

"People like dancing monkeys," I replied

"Yeah but no one loves one," he countered. _How wrong you are. _

.

The year past by sluggishly, and with bated breath I survived another Reaping.

We settled back into an alternative rhythm. Whilst before, one heavy year ago, we had spent nearly every waking hour together. Finnick, the boy who had once been such a constant in my life, was summoned like a dog to and from the Capitol every other week.

Whilst the Capitol was a reminder of a not yet old wound; the continually rebuked title of 'champion' was enough to help him recall that he was still alive. I knew it got to him though. His moods were easy enough to predict; I'd learnt the nuances of his face well enough to know the weakness of his smile. The games had drilled a chasm in him, one that would never be filled, no matter how many times I grasped at his hands and leaned upon him, hoping I might slip into that crack in his heart and seal it forever.

He spent most of his time travelling, or sleeping. The moments we had were usually spent in such a state; the two of us sprawled across one another's bed, whispering stories of witches and adventures we wished we could live, out into the early hours.

I soon found my body clock was defined by his presence. I saved all my sleep for him, and we dreamt in tangent. I craved not to be alone.

We talked too of the games, more openly now. His wounds had healed but he was still torn up inside.

He writhed about at night, and I soon found he had saved his sleep for me too. When they first started all I knew to do was to shake him, but even that wouldn't pull him from the tangles of sleep.

The nightmares multiplied, lapsing into each other like unbroken waves.

He saved his sleep for me, for I was the only one that could quell the terrors.

I learnt how to hold him tightly and never let go. He'd tear at my skin and leave me bruised, but I was numb. The only thing I could do was prevent him from gouging out his eyes in a fit of unconscious fear. I couldn't stop the dreams; only soothe them.

He'd whimper and cry, and I'd do so too, for I was a failure.

"_Here in this bed you're safe," _was all I could say, but I knew it would never be enough.

He'd cry out as though his chest was cracked upon and the dead bodies of all those children were feasting upon him. I was as much a part of his broken heart, and with each night passed, I felt as though I had been feasted upon too.

What was I? The devil's wife in his eyes. A girl willing to subject herself to his false evil.

He thought himself cursed.

Yet I only saw a boy loved.

.

I soon turned fifteen, and after that, in our natural pattern, he turned sixteen.

Something changed in him. Something most foul. I'd waved him off a smiling boy at that train station, to be handed back a broken man.

I waited for his return from the Capitol on his bed, as I always did, but received no acknowledgment as he stormed into his room.

"How was it?" I asked, searching his face, finding only a frown and a grunt.

"Bad I guess?" He still wasn't talking

"Where's my Finnick gone?" I joked, reaching out for his arm.

"I ain't anybody's!" His breath was wasted in reddening his face, as his words suddenly burst out in a snarl, snatching his arm away with such ferocity it had me unconsciously taking steps back. I'd obviously hit a nerve.

"When did you become so foul? And so inarticulate." I was astounded at his sudden rage.

"When did you think it was okay to intrude?"

"Intrude? Sorry I didn't think I was." I was really quite lost. I could see the vessels in his eyes had burst; I dared to think there might have been tears.

"Because you never think."

"Stop acting like a brat." I folded my arms protectively across my chest.

"You're calling me a brat?"

"Yes Finnick, you're acting like a child!" I protested.

"Get out," He demanded.

"Finnick," I reached out to grab his hand again, stupidly, as though I hadn't learnt anything from just moments before.

His hand glanced past my cheek, but made no contact. He was howling now and I didn't know what to do. All sense had quickly dissolved from the room.

"Get. Out!" He shouted once more, an angry finger jabbing at the door.

"You can't treat me this way!" I replied just as loudly.

"Who cares?" he scoffed.

"I don't deserve it!" I could feel the words resonate in my throat, just as I felt the heat rise in my cheeks.

His face formed a petulant scowl, and for once we both agreed on what I had just said. I didn't deserve it and I wouldn't stand for it. This wasn't my Finnick, or _just _Finnick, as he had demanded. I knew a different boy; one who could be mean, but only in teasing. He was never malicious, not without being justly provoked.

Something was deeply wrong. Something had changed in him, and I feared it.

The way his shoulder shook and what they were shaking for.

_It was the thought of her undressing. _

The dust settled in the air around us, taking the chance in the silence to filter downwards, our row had stirred up a storm.

"Annie I -" he moved to speak. His face was still red, just as my own was.

"Don't. You have nothing more to say to me," I denied him any chance of apology. My ears still stung, just as I was sure his did.

"No. I don't." Like a scolded child his chin hung down to his chest and he refused to meet my eyes. I searched his face for some recognition of the boy I had once known.

"You can't come here anymore," he whispered, as though his words burnt at his mouth.

"I wouldn't want to anyway."

I didn't even register the sound of the door slamming behind me.

.

It was painful not to speak, but he wasn't there much anyway. I could feel him slipping away, physically falling from my finger's grasp.

Suddenly all of the Capitol wanted a piece of him, and he was there twice as much as he was in his own district.

I spent the night fixing all the problems I made in my own head. I'd already heard him fictionally apologize countless times, even practiced my own sorrys, enough to fool myself into thinking it were real.

I could feel his absence and I resented it. I didn't care for what had provoked such an outburst, and resolved to forget it. I only wanted him back; didn't care what scars he was hiding from me.

Finnick was in pain and who was I to deny him?

.

I knew he was there before I saw him.

Out from the kitchen's window I watched him observing the house, his hands in his pockets, allowing the night's wind to play about with his hair.

It was the first I'd seen of him in almost a month.

He was lovely in the starlight.

With still soapy hands, slick from the sink I moved to the open door, leaning upon its frame to watch him for a moment. He'd changed so much. He was taller, falling prey to continual boyish growth spurts. Sixteen had brought a new maturity, not only to his face, but also in the depths of his eyes. I thought they had altered after the games, but that had been through fire and brimstone. The sea green irises now reflected something new, but not wholly pleasant. Whilst his face was still remarkably handsome, his eyes had been attacked by such ugly images; they seemed weighed down under the burden of a tainted nature.

"Come inside Finnick," I asked quietly.

"I can't," was his faint reply.

"Please, just, please," my voice was weary, just as his was.

He shook his head, before turning and making his way back along the beach.

I resolved to stay inside, to let him walk away, let it be his choice and not my own. But I really was weak in the gut for his call, and he didn't even know it.

I followed him to Cat Rock, a blanket in hand. He'd settled down right at its edge, letting his legs hang over the lapping waters.

"Aren't you meant to be in the Capitol?" I asked as I approached.

"I didn't want to anymore. I just couldn't take it." I sat beside him, though not close. I could see the tension in his shoulders, feeling the muscles contract just as his jaw clenched.

"They expect the monkeys to do more than just dance," he laughed hollowly, his eyes not matching his mouth.

In the moonlight I could see the plume of bruises around his face. His jaw was battered with purple, his wrists too; I saw a ring of pressed fingered and half healed claw marks. Finnick had been in a struggle, yet I didn't know if it were from the escape, or from what he was escaping.

"Finnick, where were you?"

"I'll get it in the neck when I go back." He refused to answer, passing it of with another empty laugh.

"Do you have to go back?" He nodded without hesitation, as though his life depended on the answer.

I couldn't pretend to understand, that would only be patronizing. Instead we sat together, just enjoying the very little time we now had together. I moved closer and rested my head upon his shoulder, liking the familiarity of how we fitted together.

"I wish I could just swim away," he projected out to the restless sea.

"Just as long as I can come too."

"That's the only way I'd have it Annie." His mouth was pretty with his words.

I wanted to kiss him so badly. I blushed furiously for taking such notice of his lips, but I couldn't help it. Why were we so complex? I half wished we'd only just met; that we could brush all those known features that made us vulnerable, those that made us feel unlovable under the rug. Perhaps I knew him too well, and that loving him in such a way was wrong. I had to reserve myself to the fact that nothing would come of it. Because if it did and it went wrong? That would be worse than loosing him briefly to some petty argument. I had him as a friend, and I should cherish that.

"I really messed up this time," his words were hushed.

"You didn't," I assured.

"I did Annie," he turned to look me in the eye, his face softening.

His face came closer, enough for me to be able to trace the premature lines about his eyes, the pattern of his irises and the length of half-inch long lashes.

"I need to make it up to you," he whispered, moving even nearer.

Though it was exactly what I wanted, proximity, I suddenly felt afraid.

I could blame my reaction to my age, to my inability to properly think, or perhaps that I was just stupid. My two palms quickly found themselves on his shoulders, pushing back. He let himself fall of the rock, not even reaching out, just his bemused face flashing past.

He disappeared beneath the waves, and as soon as I saw his head resurface, I followed.

The waters were cold, and for a few brief seconds, unfamiliar. I felt his hands about my waist, gripping to me, so that we might not lose each other again. His hair was slicked back, enough for me to see the continuation of bruises, blossoming from his hair line in the ill light. I could feel his legs, keeping us afloat between my own.

Hesitantly I let a finger explore his forehead, lightly tracing the smattering of inky marks, watching his face for any reaction.

"Why did you come back?" I asked quietly, feeling his heavy breath against my wet cheek.

"There's nothing like you and I Annie." He said it with such certainty, that it would take a world to convince me otherwise.

"I'll never give you up," he whispered, his face coming close again.

.

I found them a week later.

Thul and Kel dead on the beach.

Their boat had washed ashore, cracked in half, the wood splintered as though someone had taken a hammer to it. Because someone had. For this was no storm's touch.

A man had drilled those holes into their heads. Their scalp was matted with drying blood.

Thul's eyes stared blankly above and I wondered numbly if he'd watched the sun rise.

My stomach emptied by Kel's feet, his body turned over so all I could see was his back; pale and blotchy in death.

And so I did the only thing I knew to. Two pieces of splintered wood by each of their heads and then I was gone. Running full of fright away from what I knew would certainly define our futures.

Finnick's brothers had been murdered and I had masked it as an accident.

.

_My biggest cliff hanger yet. I like being dramatic, it makes my life less mundane. How horrid of me though, to find enjoyment from tormenting fictional characters!_

_Your reviews, comments and critiques are an absolute delight, and thank you to all who have done so. _


	14. All My Secrets Soft

_I've had this chapter written for a long time now. The ending was the first part of this piece that I ever wrote. It's taken me an awfully long time to get around to finally publishing it! Hopefully I'll strike the right reaction in you all. _

_Things will really _start _gaining momentum after this. _

_._

**XIV. All My Secrets Soft.**

.

_His face had come close, but not close enough. _

_He rose from the water and she sees the scratches on his back. _

_Those creatures of passion marking him as their own. _

_._

They declared that it had been the storms doing.

I'd made it to the front door before throwing up again. All I wanted to do was rid the putrefied thoughts from my mind, but they stuck to my retinas and would not let go, subjecting me to the horrors of their dead faces over and over.

The Peacekeepers took away their bodies before the remaining Odairs could see them, and so it was only I who endured the sight of their cracked skulls. The blood had oozed out and sunk into the sand, never to be retrieved; the beach would hold onto their last thoughts, blown from their minds for the rest of time. They had truly become one with the sea, the metal had ripping through their heads to splatter their brains out into the ageless tides.

They said it was the work of the sea, that perhaps they'd been caught in a rip tide and dragged out to the rocks. I'd heard word that they blamed the shattering of their boat; how shards of wood had impaled one head and the rocks had smashed the other.

Would they have lied just as easily if I hadn't moved the wood? Perhaps so.

The guilt still suffocated me. I felt as if my throat was filling with a gratuitous bile that threatened to overflow, spilling out the secrets of their death.

"_His bruised face" _I suddenly thought "_the trace of nails upon his back."_

What passionate throws had he escaped to come back to me? The only nails I'd seen to inflict such damage had been those of the Games escort_. A woman of the Capitol_. But I was being stupid surely? Shocked and paranoid, desperately trying to make connections to something that didn't exist.

But had Finnick's disobedience resulted in such a grossly unjust outcome?

It shook me to the bone, deep reverberations that paralyzed my skin with an icy sweat. Now I knew what it must be like for Finnick at night.

My dreams were filled with smashing their sleeping skulls in with shattered wood. Thul's eyes were everywhere, in the on my hands, in the pores of my skin. I could not escape the judgement in those eyes. I was going mad with grief, for every waking moment seemed filled with flashes of their frozen corpses.

.

_I wished we had kissed; we pressed foreheads but came no closer. _

_I'd felt his breath across my lips and memorized its rhythm._

_That mouth was hot at night. _

_Mingled in with the sights of his brothers' mutilated faces, that mouth touched mine over and over._

_My own lips whispered "I love you" but he just turned away. _

.

Rising on the morning of their funeral, my limbs felt like lead.

The only joy I could possibly resurrect from today was the thought of finally seeing Finnick again. He'd been gone for a week, and usually that would be no cause for concern. But with the death of his brothers, his disappearance worried me.

I found her in Kel's bedroom, wrapped up in the sheets of his empty bed. Solesha Odair looked as though she hadn't eaten in weeks. I could feel the twist of her bones as I helped her to standing. The dark navy dress hung off her limp shoulders, the bones piercing and creasing her skin. This was not starvation though. It was sorrow.

Her gaunt face searched my own, her mouth working the names of her missing sons, all three of them. I shook my head.

Finnick would not be found.

We walked hand in hand; though soon that was not enough. With my arm wrapped around her thin waist we made it through the streets of the seaport, grim faces peering from between the cracks in shutters and doors.

Four Peacekeepers carried their linen bound bodies beside us, as wearily we made the long journey to the cliffs. The winds buffeted us about, throwing our hair; my own darkening locks wrapping around Solesha's greying sprawl. She was too young surely to be plagued with age, but yet it were so, touches of white playing about her temple as though the pain from her tormented brain had leaked out.

We waited for the others at the top of the cliffs hoping they might arrive before the bodies were lost to the sea. My family didn't show and neither did her husband. Just like the boys, they were drowning, though this time it was in a bottle, and not their own blood.

With firm hands, Thul went first. Just as he had been heavy with a quiet courtesy in life, his body fell the cliff's length quickly, disappearing in the black waters below. Kel went next, and together the brothers resurfaced, like two small gulls, bobbing along on the undulation of the waves.

She tried to throw herself over but was stopped with heavy hands, like a crumpled doll in their restraint. She lamented for her children, for the sons she no longer owned. She'd never see them again, never touch or kiss them ever.

All three Odair boys were lost, and none would ever be found.

.

The months past by painfully now.

I was without my Finnick, not just in distance, but in my mind too. He was gone, as absent in my being as he had been at his own brothers' funeral.

At the start I focused my time on the boats, filling my mind with the menial task of hauling in the fish; the only marker of the passage of time was the new strength I was finding in my arms.

His father stopped talking and his mother wouldn't stop.

I couldn't bear to be around my own family, rather devoting my time to helping Solesha dress and eat. She had regressed back into a child, trying perhaps to reconnect with the three she had just lost. I would miss the scent of my own mother and would briefly visit her; but she understood the duty I had taken upon myself.

Solesha and I were in this madness together; the one of waiting for Finnick; our minds addled by that dreadful addiction that was that bronze haired boy. We'd wait in our little cocoon of cobwebs and linen sheets for our next fix, the one we were dying for now.

My time being fifteen was up, each day a grain of sand slowly filling up that bowl, just as the names would when the next Games arrived. Finnick's birthdate also passed by with no sight of the boy. He was seventeen now.

_Come let him think himself a man _

In my eye there was a picture. One where we turned back time and lived forever in the days before his games. Then I'd only feared the siren and her mental fatigue; now I lived with one, bathed and fed her. Back then I'd never known death in such a way, it had always been at a distance. Back then I'd had no concept of love.

.

He found us lying in his bed. It was a habit of mine I'd failed at resisting; still vaguely hoping that when he eventually retuned, I'd be there to greet him. I stroked her hair and made sure she didn't try to bite her own wrists in a fit of tormented sleep.

My weary eyes met his own, but I couldn't bear to keep up contact.

"You're back," I wanted to smile, but the pain of seeing him again was too great a weight.

"Annie." His voice was almost pleading.

"You didn't come to their wake." My voice was quiet, too quiet, but mustering up even that seemed to require breaking off little parts of me.

"I was elsewhere," he dismissed it feebly, as though elsewhere was a perfectly sound excuse.

"Where then? Where on earth could you be?" I was aware of how loud my voice had suddenly become, and the finally sleeping form of his mother next to me. I rose slowly and moved from the room, following the stairs down to the living room. The windows had been thrown open, and I relished at the cool air upon my face.

I could feel his presence at the doorway, the tension in his shoulders. I knew Finnick, I knew the nuances of his body and could read him without seeing him.

"Don't you know it was me that killed them?" He voice was almost a growl behind me.

"You know that's not true." I didn't want to face him. Out of the corner of my eye, I could feel he stare intently searching for my own.

"You found the bodies. Don't you dare lie to me Annie. I know what you saw." His accusations stung.

"I saw two dead men. Two dead men that I loved and sent off to sea." I twisted my body round to face him, wrapping my arms around my middle defensively.

"They're safer there."

"How can you say that?"

"What? Do you want me to admit to sentencing them to death? Is that what you want Annie?" His voice rose, and so did mine.

"No!" I shook my head furiously in disbelief. "Where were you?" I implored loudly.

"Elsewhere," he dismissed.

"You said that already!"

"Do you really need an answer?"

"I think I do. You've just left us high and dry. Your mother-" I pointed furiously upstairs "-needed you Finnick. She loves you and misses you. She needed to know you were okay!"

"But I am, clearly."

"_I_ needed to know you were okay!"

Young bruises caressed his face. The boy had transformed once again. The way he hung his shoulders was new, like a wounded animal. He held himself limply; before you'd expect him to take any attack with resilience, now he looked as though he wanted to be put out of his misery.

"Do you really want to know where I was?" He voice was almost manic.

"I know Finnick." I did, or I thought so. I didn't want to believe that my darkest fears might be true.

"You don't, you don't Annie," his voice grew with ferocity.

"Finnick please." I found myself whispering.

"I'm a whore Annie! I'm Snow's whore!" He howled. I flinched at the word and how foul Finnick projected it from his mouth.

"See! You're just as disgusted as I am!"

"I'm not," I shook my head. I didn't know what to say, what to do.

He closed his eyes and I could see the pain welling up in his face.

When he finally opened them again, they were blood shot with frustration. I reached out to wipe the solitary tear from his face as it stormed down his face in a fury.

"Just don't touch me," he snarled, flinching away like an injured animal.

"Finnick," I pleaded, only wanting him to let me close.

"I don't want your pity Annie!" He shouted, and my protests fell silent.

I watched him crumble in front of me and there was nothing I could do. He didn't want me near; he just wanted space. He wanted to be so apart from the world he was no longer tangible. Then, he couldn't be touched. My mind swarmed with the cruel images of what he had been subjected to, all with a smile plastered across his face for the foul mockery of it all. For a boy who had been so deliberately tormented, my touch would be another imprint burnt upon his skin.

"We're falling apart again." The tears finally came, ill-timed silent streaks that traced my face like I wished that boy would.

"I guess so," he shrugged limply, his words tumbling down into the steadily growing chasm between us.

.

Mags stood in front of their house as though she had been waiting for me. The broken off stems of dandelions were firmly clenched in her hands as she stood stoically outside in the cold.

As though wafting a smell, her hand beckoned me out of the house, to follow into her own.

Mags was a curiosity. I'd never come so close to her before, and suddenly I really could see her age. I'd always known her to be old, never really seen any progression. Like a statue, she'd remained the same, the only change being the appearance of more lines, and the disappearance of her remaining teeth. I'd only ever seen her on the screens, or through the gaps of the curtain as she pottered around in her own garden. She spent a lot of her time outside of her house, away from the wealth and it's sickness.

Just weeks after Finnick was crowned winner, she'd suffered an infection of the brain and had never been quite the same. The overhaul of sudden attention to her welfare had caused her to become reclusive, but I had often seen her with Finnick. They'd formed a bond over the years, and I guess he owed her his life. She had been there for him in a way no one else had, and no matter where he might be, he'd never forgotten. That was a part of Finnick I had not yet lost; the thought of their companionship helped me hold onto my rapidly failing belief that my boy still remained.

Her house was chaotically still. Broken cups lined the walls; long dead flowers hung their heads in tall vases of stagnant water. The house smelt musty, though not unpleasant as I had expected. Just like the woman who owned it, the house was caught in time, no reference of passing. She disappeared from sight along the gloomy corridor and I allowed myself the chance to gaze upon my surrounding. I feared to move, in case I might disrupt the staked piles of books, yellowing spines climbing precariously high. Like a ghost Mags was able to navigate the discordant maze she's constructed; I was like a brutish puppy, even a twitch might send out an avalanche.

The sound of dripping perforated the silence. It was slow, methodical; almost unnoticeable. It came from no visible leak, yet it's rhythmic beat rang out as though it could have been in the room. It was maddening almost in its consistency, enough time between each drip to fool you into thinking it might have stopped.

I slipped into the nearest room, hoping to find some clear floor to pass through. What had once been her living room, had transformed into a circus tent of cobwebs. The curtains were drawn tightly shut; yet over the years the tiny mouths of a thousand moths had worn in thin, allowing a muted glow to waft in. I could trace the spectral bodies of the dust mites as they danced in the air, relishing in the flurries my fingers made, as the particles took them up as partners in their waltz.

The next room, which I entered through a pried open door, was alike in its state of disarray. The furniture had been piled up against the peeling walls, the table overturned and pushed up against the windows, small crack of light escaping over the tops to filter in dim light.

The dripping could be heard here as well, it's volume unchanging. Perhaps I was imagining things, for the room was remarkably dry; only dust lived here, dust and lies. I could taste them on the tip of my tongue. They hung in the air like convicts. Guilt lined the walls, erupted out from the upholstery and ripped wallpaper as though Mags had been searching for it. Perhaps for the source of that incessant dripping too.

This house had been unloved for far too long, and as I carefully manoeuvred further in, I felt as though I were in some subterranean lair. There was a weight upon this house; I could feel it in my bones. The ceiling sagged and the doorframes threatened to fall in. Yet was not the weight of any physical burden, it was what the house was built on; the bodies of a thousand tributes. It was a feeling of demise.

I found her making tea in what could have been her kitchen. Long sheets had been draped from nails clawed into the ceiling and walls. The moths had been at them too, to the point that they wafted slowly, like billows of smoke suspended in the air. The room was dank, yet silent.

I then understood why Mags subjected herself to such a place. This was the only place she couldn't hear the dripping.

_Blood's surprisingly thick. Leaking out of pubescent bodies, pooling in her hands, her eyes and ears, soaking her bones in their torture. _

I watched her as she stuffed dandelion heads into the pot of steaming water, letting their milk diffuse out before pouring two doses of hot yellowy tea. She offered me a chipped mug, which I took tenderly in my hands, looking about for a place to sit in amongst the dust. Whilst the rest of the house had seemed to breathe, here everything was perfectly motionless.

Mags lead me out of a small glass door into what looked like a forest. The sky overhead was muted and I realized it was from a sheet of grimy glass. We were in an overgrown conservatory. Vines had wrapped themselves around its structure over the years, creating a small enclosure of dense greenery. The view above was purple with wisteria, it's fronds reaching down to touch our heads and join in our wordless conversation.

We perched on leafy chairs and as I looked around the space, she studied me. Her eyes were as old as her face, weary and tired, as though she had seen it all before. I knew she would not speak, but the nuances of her face were, though subtle, a language of their own.

"_We both know what's up there," _her eyes stared me down, a starling blue, unlike the sea green I was accustomed to seeing in our district. Her eyes were like ice water, an unbreakable chasm.

"Stories to tell," I said aloud, surprising myself and the vines around me to the oddity of speech. I was gifted with a small toothless smile, which I returned, enjoying the genuine company of someone else who seemed to understand. We were both creatures of our heads. People like Finnick were ruled by their hearts, but we stayed firmly in the realms of rational thought. Or so I had. Like an infection, it seemed as though recently my brain was ceasing to cooperate; but being with Mags, I felt a sense of clarity.

"_And we both know what's in there," _her crumpled chest inflated slightly.

"A feeble heart?"

She shook her head vehemently, but I had no chance to protest as her jaw set once again.

"Well it's not his if that's what you're implying." She shrugged and gulped down her tea nosily. I looked down at my own and the head of a limp dandelion stared back sardonically. Even the flowers were mocking me.

"He had mine - _has _mine. But I don't have his. I think it works like that. So I guess I'm heartless," I liked the sound of her laughter. It was something I hadn't heard in a long time. Her throat had a harshness to it, as though lined with sandpaper, the laughter was scratched and scathed as it came out, forming an unforgiving bark. Once regaining her composure, she met my eyes again.

"_Think again."_

"I've done far too much thinking."

"_Speak again."_

"I don't think he wants to."

She finished her tea, letting two sister heads drop to the floor, contacting with a smack, like a wet kiss.

Slowly with her aged bones she rose to leave, taking my own untouched cup. I turned to her, searching her face for eye contact. Her steely gaze was for the first time pained, I thought by age, but I could see that set deep into her eyes were dark amber speckles. They were stains that would never leave her sight.

"_There will be a point where it's too late." _

I knew that all too well.

.

We had a habit of finding one another.

I'd stayed sitting there in Mags' conservatory, watching the filaments of light fade as the day drained away. I felt no want nor need to move. In there I was no longer caught, no longer constricted by the throttling fear that overwhelmed us all.

The light was dwindling fast, the leaves turned translucent by the sun's last golden vestiges. It felt as though we were in a paper lamp; failing to produce a light ourselves. We were two drowned corpses, our lungs both too full to speak.

I could feel him behind me, watching the sun as well. I had him once again. But like always, he was out of reach.

Suddenly all semblances of sanity crumbled and it slipped out from my lips.

"I love you Finnick."

I couldn't see his face, couldn't hear his breath; only feel his presence behind me, that man who still felt like the boy who once taught me to fish.

"I'm in love with you and have been for too long."

My words seemed to catch him off guard, for he remained wordless, we both did. I rose from the chair to face him.

"I can't," his voice was hoarse as though he had been crying, but I saw no trace of tears upon his cheeks.

"You can't or you won't?" I asked quietly.

"I'm a whore Annie. You know it and I know it." He hung his head ashamedly; afraid of being loved in any way.

"You're not." My voice was louder than it had been before, finding some strength in denying that cursed word so vehemently. My Finnick wasn't a whore. He was a victim of the cruelty of others. He subjected himself to it for the lives of those he loved; I could see it now.

"I can't," he stared me straight in the eye and said it.

"Why not?"

"They'll kill you," his voice was a whisper, his eyes imploring me to understand. I couldn't work my mouth, couldn't feel any of my body. It was just me and him; his eyes on mine. My heart was palpitating, not out of some exclamation of undying love, but for the fact that I could see the futility of it all now. He'd never let us be together. He feared the Capitol and he feared himself.

"Then I'll just have to say goodbye." I decided "Like I always do.' Tears were running down my cheeks. Hot angry tears, frustration at my own weakness, my own resolution to give up a fight that had never truly begun.

"I don't want it to be this way." He moved closer, his height towering over me as I looked up to study the grim line his mouth had become.

"But you don't do anything to stop it."

"I can't say no to the Capitol!" His eyes were fearful, childlike again.

"It's not that!" My voice was louder than I anticipated it to be.

"What do you mean?' He looked shocked.

"What's happening to us?"

"What do you mean?" There was a fierce tightness in his jaw.

"Us. You and me Finnick. You keep pushing me away. And I hate it. I hate not being with you. You made me feel safe Finnick, you were my clarity; my sanity. You were the only one I had. But now I've lost you too. You can't just come and go and expect me just to fall back into default. If you're doing it because you genuinely hate me-"

"Annie-"

"- or that you think you're saving me." I continued, "Then just tell me Finnick, tell me to go and I will. But please don't hurt me. Please don't you hurt me."

"I would never hurt you."

"But you are."

I felt him move up against me, his head lent down to meet my own, a proximity we had not had in a long time.

"I still owe you," he whispered against my cheek.

"You don't owe me anything." It hurt to say it, but the words slipped out quietly from between my lips, slipped out from the cracks in my crumbling heart.

.

_I just realized how much I ramble. It's terrible. When I start writing it's like my brain disembowels and all these crazy adverse details tumble out. Perhaps I watch far too much Criminal Minds and try to profile every character I write. I just want to develop their internal character progression and their actual feelings; but I guess I get a little carried away._

_Is that a bad thing? I think I'm addicted to useless description. I'll try to cut back on how much I write if anyone finds it all too lengthy._

_Any opinions to help me improve would be adored!_


	15. Bring Me A Higher Love

**XV. Bring Me A Higher Love.**

.

I knew all his hiding places and he knew all of mine.

He stood alone on Cat Rock; netting pooled around his feet limply, as though he'd had the intention to fish, but had then been distracted by the sea.

His hair was growing out again. Like the filaments in a light bulb it looked as though it were alight in the drowning sun. His hair was an accurate marker of how much time had elapsed since his last visit to the Capitol. They seemed to delight in grooming him and it would take weeks for the glitter and grease to wash out.

It was remarkable how much we'd aged. He was so different to that boy I had once known; that mop of bronze hair and golden limbs, elbows and knees, grazed by the exuberance of our adventures. He was tall now, towering over me by at least a foot as I approached him.

He turned to face me for the first time since we'd been alone in Mags conservatory. It felt like an age ago, though in reality only two solemnly spent weeks had passed. I'd hidden in my room for the most of it cursing myself repeatedly for being so foolish as to blurt out those secret feelings. I wanted to rewind time and take back everything I'd said.

There was a fear in his eyes, it was in mine as well, like a film of dust, changing and distorting what was right in front of us.

I decided to fill the space between us. If he wasn't going to talk, I just have to pretend that nothing had happened and hope to salvage whatever vestiges of a relationship we had left.

"Do you remember when we came here, when we were young?" I asked standing as near as any self-preservation would allow me to.

He didn't reply. He didn't even look at me, he eyes remaining stoically towards the horizon.

"That makes us sound like we're old, doesn't it? I feel it."

"How old were we then?" I thought aloud "I was twelve. Gods and now I'm almost seventeen."

I forced a laugh.

"I feel like Mags now. All aged and weary. Not like Mags though. She's still -" I struggled for a word to encapsulate such a woman "-something."

I looked to his face once again to see if talk of his mentor might entice some response.

"I see her a lot now. I'm helping her with her garden and trying to tidy her house. She's teaching me how to gut fish. Proper. Like how the markets do it."

His face gave away nothing. With a sigh I sat down heavily.

"I sorry I didn't look after you," I let it whisper out from between my teeth. I didn't expect a response to such a stagnant apology. But it was true. I had let him down in so many ways. Why should I be the one to moan and go around constantly breaking things, when I had been through no true trauma other than living? Perhaps I had made us out to be something we were not. In my silly little head I'd constructed up these undeniable feelings, but had pressed them upon him, when all he really needed was a friend.

Perhaps we weren't ever meant to be the pair of duelling hearts I had once envisioned.

"You're the only one who ever has Annie." He finally spoke, and I was relieved to hear his voice after some much of my own.

"Give me your hand," I requested firmly, hold up my own to his. His palm was just as I remembered it, warm and rough, like the grip of a rock that had been basking in the sun, as I pulled him down to sit beside me.

"We'll conquer them all," I promised.

I held his lonely hand and felt his pulse as he squeezed my fingers gently.

.

The wind that day was like an August moon, short lived and rarely seen.

Mags never strayed far from the docks. Unlike many of the Victors I had met, she avoided self-imposed solitude. She crouched at the end of the pier like a plucked crow, her beak of a nose breaking out towards the sea, as though with the intention of cutting the waves. From her perch she could hear the undulations of the town, but was not overwhelmed, just quietly and comfortably reminded of the presence of human life.

The skin of the sea was smooth that day; the winds light upon its surface. Mayflies, with their diaphanous wings and tiny celluloid bodies batted about her ears as though wanting to find a purchase to offload the secrets of their short-lived existences.

I saw a writhing pile of fish rise up from the sea as I approached. Her arms were bare of muscle, and yet full of strength as she hauled up the net. She picked out one at random and without hesitation brought it down with force. The sharp smack of the fish's head against the dock was not unfamiliar to me, but still shocked me.

She held the knife deftly in her hand, and in one swift motion, carved open a grinning groove. Her fingers were almost musical in how they played at the newly made flaps, drawing out the fish's innards.

Then, suddenly she was holding out the knife to me. She'd shown me how to gut fish before, but had never offered a chance to actually practise.

My brothers were the ones in charge of the knives, and though I had watched them countless times gut a fish, I had only attempted the feat a few futile attempts. Usually I'd ended up piercing the other side, or forgetting to remove the bones and bladder.

The knife was slippery with lymph, bile and blood, and my knuckles were white from the strain of my grip. The knife pierced the fish's belly and her hand was suddenly upon mine, guiding me in the motions.

She took the fish's eyes for her own, grinning as she popped them between her bare gums. I'm sure in any other district the sight might have been repulsing, but where poverty and hunger were so rife, every part of the fish suddenly became edible. I'd heard stories of men trapped out to sea, surviving without water by purely relying on the moisture found in the fishes' eyes and the gaps in their spines.

With a nod of approval, I set upon the remaining few fish. She occupied herself with retrieving a small wirehair pin, hidden in the furls of her ash coloured locks. It was like string in her worn hands as she twisted it about. She was quick with her work, and soon had fashioned the perfect curve of a fishing hook. She gestured to the knife, and after handing it to her, I watched as she shaved at the metal, creating a point that was almost delicate in how slight it was.

The fish seemed to admire her work as much as I did, for they jumped at the chance to lock their mouths around her creation. Soon we had a rhythm between us. Every so often she'd bring up a new catch, and it would be another opportunity for me to practise gutting.

The tune dribbled out from between her lips like a stream. It took sometime for her lungs to muster up the strength until my ears could even register the quivering of her throat. At first she hummed, her throat dry as sand as her voice climbed the different regions of pitch and tone. Soon though, choice words broke out. I had never heard her speak before; the language between us had been one of silent gestures and looks. But singing was something entirely new.

I recognized the tune from something my father had once sung, but Mags constructed an entirely different meaning with the injection of new lyrics. Religion was not something the districts were accustomed too, only ours really allowing themselves to fall prey to the charm of sea deities. But here, she sung of devils' wives and the balance of ones soul. Though unknown, the words were mellifluous enough to lift up from the air and implant themselves in my mind, and soon they were forming upon my own lips.

The day grew weary, spissatus clouds draping themselves over the sun so that our stoop on the pier was overcast. Her arms though were lissom despite the day spent hauling in fish one by one. After each catch, and each of my own subsequent attempts at gutting, she would stop and inspect. Bit by bit my motions became braver, less clumsy, led by experience, not expectation.

For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable with a knife in my hands.

.

_I found him, perched upon the ridge top, in the hollow of our cave. The walls danced again for us, the shadows chanting an impossible beat faster and faster, until waves of blackest ink poured out from a thousand secret crevices._

_The sea engulfed me, its fingers trailing across the seams of my skin, pulling it from me as though it were a night dress. I was naked in my purest form, the salt stains of my life washed away. Bourne upon the crest of a magnificent wave, and then stomached once again. _

_The air left my lungs in pearlised drops. Like blind eyes they rose to illuminate him, above me in the darkness. It was the two of us, but older, not just in our skin, but in our minds as well. He brought his face close and kissed my nose and cheeks in such a rush that I felt the need to cling to his neck. _

_I was swelling for him. A green wrap of silk about my hips; it now curled up my growing waist like smoke. _

_But he was still in my hands. He was all that mattered. _

_Like a hidden flower, his mouth unfurled for me, whispering out the secrets of the silk spun stars. _

_I was seeing scars. _

_Deep and red, oozing out from his back as the beast of many hands clawed at him. I heard no sound but I knew how they shrieked in a sickening ecstasy. They wanted to wear his skin like a scarf, wrap it round their engorged body. _

_No matter how much I clung to his neck, their fingers still felt their way under my own to dig into his bare flesh._

_His head fell away and I was left with the stump of his suppurating neck, bleeding out strings of bloodied net._

The dreams were back and I couldn't control them.

The siren had been dormant for years, yet from between sweat soaked sheets her screams erupted once again into the forefront of my fears.

She had grown just as I had, though this time more fearsome than before.

.

His face was the most transcendent visual I had ever committed to memory. I could not shake it from my mind; he was there, haunting me. And so I resolved to seek him out and put an end to it all for once. I was done playing childish games, done tiptoeing around him and pretending I felt nothing.

I had climbed the cove's walls in an act of defiance, but also in the hope of reaching higher ground, in order to seek him out. I hadn't expected to find him perched at the cliff's edge, looking over into the waters where his brother's bodies had disappeared. The sky was a furious grey, as though the clouds were attempting to frown and the winds tossed my hair about like a brutish child, vying for my attention.

"Do you come here often?" I asked, standing behind him, examining the back of his neck as though that might give me the emotional response I was searching for.

Finally after some time, he replied, "I owe them." He answered with such assurance, that I wondered how many times he'd repeated that over and over in his mind.

"You owe them nothing Finnick, you were a good brother, you made them proud," I replied just as firmly.

"Proud?" His head snapped round.

"I'm a whore Annie. I'm Snow's toy." He stood with an alarm I had not seen before, as though boiling water had surged through his veins.

"Don't say that," I shot back quickly.

"Why not? It's the truth." That manic quality had filled his eyes again, the uncontrollable shame. He face seemed to screw up with a thought that would not leave him, one that was weighted heavily upon his shoulders, like a noose around his neck.

"I wish I had died in the games!" he suddenly shouted out to the waves, his brother's bodies some way below their waters.

Finally there it was; his breaking point.

"No! No, do not say that!" I reached for his neck with my hands and stared the shame right in the eye.

"Why? I'm just a slab of meat," he cried, as though he had any chance of convincing me it was true.

"Because you're mine Finnick, and I thank each day for it letting me have your for a little longer." I couldn't shout at him any more. His hands were about my wrists, as though I was now the only thing holding him up.

"But I'm not here anymore Annie." His voice grew quiet, and with his direction, so did my own.

"Then let me bring you back."

"How can you still stand me?"

"I can still love you."

"No Annie."

He seemed to be disintegrating before me. For so long the anger had built up inside him and with nowhere to go, had directed itself inwards. He believed allowing himself any vestiges of humanity were an overindulgence. He'd become a man of little self admiration, so much changed from the cocky boy I'd once known.

But I was beginning to see him once again. As the walls broke down; the glitter and the grease and the grime of the Capitol washing away as his fingered raked at my wrists.

The look of restraint upon his face was almost brutal, the inner turmoil raging behind his eyes.

"Why won't you let me love you? There's no point telling me otherwise," I asked softly.

"Because he'll kill you. Like he did with Thul and Kel." He sounded so broken, so lost and incomplete. Finally he let go and slumped against me.

"Annie I can't love you."

"Please" I whispered against his lips "You can. You do. Please don't tell me otherwise."

"Annie-"

He kissed me with such hesitation I thought it might have been a dream.

And then there we were, forever and ever, entwined.

There was no time to draw in breath, just his mouth against mine; a salutation of our lips, as he tried to explain to me the feelings he had no words for. In that moment, it was just him and me; Finnick and Annie. Two children once on a beach, two souls now lost in each other.

He spelled out fervent poetry against my lips, as his hands felt about my waist, my own upon his face, imploring him to never break.

We were drunk on each other; the years had pent up into that infinite moment. I could taste his skin; feel his pulse and hands, holding onto me like we were drowning.

My ears burnt with his words, his lips still mouthing them against mine.

Finally he broke away and I felt myself suddenly gasping for air, as though breathing were a new concept.

"You are strangely beautiful" he said it with such sadness in his eyes that I couldn't help but deny it silently.

"I'll say it anyway." He held my face in his hand, his thumb tracing the outline of my lips as I tried to form some semblance of a voice.

"How is your world so different from mine?" he asked.

"But it's not," I whispered. I didn't want it to be, we were meant to be entwined; we were meant to inhabit each other's space.

"Seeing you, after the Games. I became aware of another galaxy almost. I think together, we are galaxies."

"With your immortal soul," I replied, once again touching his lips with my own.

The hidden stars above our heads were a smattering of ground glass; phosphorescent scintilla, that as he had described, illuminated and defined us.

He'd told me once that all the stars were named after the dead and the wounded.

But I didn't care. I was falling into oblivion.

.

_Reviews, critiques and comments are dearly cherished, and I would love it if you could help me improve. _


	16. Scream My Name You Childish Game

_I could give you many reasons for why I haven't updated recently, but I'm sure you'd all prefer if I just got on with the story. _

.

**XVI. Scream My Name. You Childish Game.**

.

If you could capture forever, life would no longer have the need to seek perfection. I enjoyed our relationship for the route it had followed. I had never met a boy like him, but if we were frozen, he'd be the only boy. Life was flavoured by comparisons, and Finnick was the finest of all.

Finer even still when I was in his arms, for then all senses could be overwhelmed and I was no longer reliant on memory. He was always better in the flesh.

I had found what I was looking for, and I was content.

For all the words we'd had in the past, time for heated conversation had gone. We lay there on that perfect evening, and for once, I knew how I wanted to spend my life.

We lay in the sand, careful not to disturb the air with word or movement. I could feel his breath as his chest rose and fell next to my cheek.

"What are you thinking?" He asked quietly, I could feel the brush his lips on the crown of my head.

"The stars, how far away do you think they are?"

"My mother says a life time away. Long enough that we could never reach them," he mused.

"That's too bad."

"I think that's the point, they're never meant to be reached."

"Then we'll never really know them." It was sad to think, their pearl eyes to never make true contact.

"There's still the stories, the names; we think we know them."

"You've told me the names, I didn't know there were stories." He'd peaked my interest. I'd always loved the harmony in his voice, as for years he'd delighted in telling me all there was by way of their names.

"Too many perhaps. I don't know them all. Mom knew a few, we made most of them up," he smiled at the thought.

"Where did they come from?"

"Before the dark ages, before anything I suppose."

The stories were like swathes of silk, flowing out to weave within the air. Serpents and bears writhed about in the air before me, as he illuminated the lines, thinner than gossamer web, between those glaring eyes. At first the geometry of it all seemed so random and ill formed, but his stories, the stories of past, the last adventures of the forgotten world, began to fill the in between spaces. Like sand it filtered through and I began to see the belt, the drawn arms and the horror filled faces as they tumbled between the hemispheres.

It wasn't the largest, but it drew me in. Bright and boasting, it lay quietly amongst its brothers and sisters.

"That one, look follow my finger."

"Algol, The Beast's eye," he replied quietly, his voice dulcet and low.

"Aren't they all eyes, they're all watching us."

"Not that one, that's the eye of the Gorgon."

"Pardon?" I felt a little ignorant under the duress of his eloquence. My boy was turning out to be quite the raconteur.

"It's part of Perseus. The hero."

I think by the shift in his shoulders, and the glint in his eye, I knew this was a favourite, perhaps one his mother was fond of retelling to the bright expectation of his youth.

"A hero? How so?" I smiled; I could feel his chest rise as the story swelled inside him.

"He was the son of a trident, or so my mom said. He killed the Gorgon."

"Algol?"

"That was her eye. Her name was Medusa and he decapitated her and saved her head for his own. And from her neck came a horse. "

I felt a twinge about my neck. Talk of loosing a head made me feel sick. For me, it was perhaps the worst way to go, the thought of knowing as the mutilation approached. What would be your final thought, distanced from your body? Would you be alive long enough to see the own bloody stump as the blood poured from your body. How would it be, to see your own dead body?

"Is that how he came to be a constellation?"

"Not quite. You see that chain of three." He traced the line with his outstretched hand.

"Almach, Mirach and Alpheratz; the brightest. " I recited the names as he had taught me a few times before, surprising myself by remembering.

"Andromeda. The princess with bravery in her mind." He sounded as though he was retelling a well-known truth.

"Don't they all?"

"Not all princess are brave, and not all hero's are either."

"I think you might be some kind of hero."

"Not like Perseus," he grinned boyishly.

"What did he do that was so great?"

"He saved her. They chained her up, in sacrifice to the sea." The thought of such a torture unnerved me.

"Who did?"

"Her parents."

"To who?"

He seemed almost amused at my alarm. "The Cetus. A wave powerful enough to obliterate everything. A monstrous thing."

"But it just wanted her?" I questioned further.

"For the brutality of it."

"Did it love her?" I interrupted again.

"Annie, let me finish the story," he chuckled humorously as I pouted.

"He saved her from the sea. He rode upon a new beasts back. The horse with wings born from the neck of Medusa. He still had the head and used it to rescue her from the rock."

"And did he love her?" I asked quietly.

"Only her. They lived for each other. And then for their children. And when they died, the loss of such a love saddened the world; so she made them into stars, for all to see, and never to forget."

"Did he kill the creature for her?"

"He didn't know her yet, not really."

"So why?"

"Because he had to; he had to protect his family, and his life as well at all coasts," he explained, his jaw tensing ever so slightly.

"So was it when he saw her?"

"Not at first. He'd known of her for all his life, but it was only then, when they'd both been through fire and brimstone did he figure out what she really meant."

"I think you're making this up now."

"I'm taking inspiration from experience."

"From decapitating monsters?"

"Before they get me," he smiled, his warm grasp lodging us up between the stars.

.

We had always spent our time with each other, but now our shared company had a different tone to it. The rhythm of our conversation had altered, as though the very syntax of our confessions had gained a romantic coarseness. There was no need to paddle about and ignore the undercurrents when we talked. All bodies of desire had risen to the surface, bloated by years of being oppressed and weighted down.

There was a harmony in his voice, as though his throat was cantilevered by light and bolstered because of it; his words rising out of that perfect neck to mingle with the sweet air.

I was happy, increasingly so. With him I could disentangle my feelings and he brought precious clarity to my clouded mind. I could pretend that I was no longer part of this threatening world; which with each steadily dying month, brought the next cycle of games closer and closer. This would be the 70th year, and my last Reaping.

The weight of such an impeding thought meant that Finnick and I spent most of our time lying down. I didn't want to unwrap myself from around him for need of walking; almost as though I felt our touch was limited, as though a clock was already winding down.

We lay in sand as always. I needed the steady stream of sea air to keep my mind from spiralling off, as I had found it had the tendency to do in recent days. I blamed the sleep loss for my weary eyes, and my mother owed my vacant stare to thought of the games. Perhaps I was loosing my mind; I had seen men and women do it before without tangible cause. The world we lived in was like a noose, one I had seen many times wrapped around the necks of the distressed in doorways and out of windows.

Finnick was my clarity; there was numinous warmth in his hold, the way of his eyes and kisses that kept me from drifting off in the bevy of seemingly mundane actions of living.

We didn't always need words as I found there, amongst the crystalline sands, the sheaths of grass tickling my neck. I could feel the flat of his hand against the base of my spine as he whispered into the hollow of my collarbone. Doors of perception flung open with his touch and the thought of him undressing flashed across the bruised sky.

I wasn't always as careful as he was in my motions, as my clumsy intentions became clear. He held my hand and kissed it.

"I can't. Not like that Annie."

"Because of them?" I looked away.

"Because of you" He replied.

"Is there something wrong with me?" I asked, confused.

"There's nothing wrong with you Annie. It's me, I mean. I can't hold you right. Not like that."

"You don't want to?"

"Annie-" he sighed heavily, pressing his forehead to mine. "With the others I distract myself and I don't want that with you," he murmured.

"How do you do it?" I asked quietly.

"I think of nets, inside my head. Knots and nets and how I feel when fishing." He sat up and I followed, feeling his arm wrap around my waist.

"And does that work?"

"It does when I remember you teaching me."

I blushed at that.

"It helps me to have your voice. Calling me things like stupid and dunce. It keeps me focused."

"Focused on the job at hand?" I couldn't help but try to smile. His face seemed so worn, his expression so unsuiting for someone of only seventeen.

He pushed at my shoulder and smiled faintly.

"Only you could make a joke about it."

I felt a limp shrug rise about my shoulders. I was in the company of animals, those that lay firmly within my breast. But I was passing over the lamentable rein to the beast within. I'd always been honest with Finnick and though the subject had surfaced before, I decided not to stir up the predictable repeat of our conversations. I did not want him to think I pitied him. Far from it. He was a man before me; and maybe I was the only one, but I could see the boy within him. The boy I loved quite contentedly.

"I want you to smile Finnick. That's all I want. We're all too serious. The world is the way it is. It's awful and suffocating, but why can't we smile as well. Unless they carve off my mouth, even my face, I'll go to my grave smiling. Because they still haven't taken that from me yet. I'm still allowed to smile."

"When did you get so old?"

"From far too long wandering the beach, feeling sorry for myself."

"I think from far too long under water, the salt's bloated your brain." His arms wrapped around me and we fell back once again into the sand.

"But why can't we smile? Right now, why should we let anything get to us? Right now we have this."

I filled my lungs with the warm, dusty air, kissing his neck.

"And one day we'll have more."

"Annie –" I he started.

I held my hand to his chest, my fingers splayed like a starfish. In my palm I could feel the rise and fall of his breath and the quickened thud of his heart.

"But this. This is enough."

His lips touched mine lightly, and I could feel his smile against my own.

"That's nice too," I grinned, feeling blissfully untouched by any fear of separation.

.

The first thing I noticed was the screen. I shouldn't have been in his house, but I had become so accustomed to breezing in and out of its doors, I though nothing of it.

It had been empty, not as I had expected, and on searching round the first few rooms of the ground floor, I stumbled into the living room.

The man was quite peculiar in sight. Tall and thin, he looked like a cut tree, his spine constructed in a wayward manner that gave the impression he was permanently battling a wind.

His eyes though, were quietly benevolent. Dark as pitch, they held a feeble light, only the artificial reflections of the crackling television screen.

The screen seemed to consume me. I couldn't make sense of the situation and so blamed it entirely. It was silent, yet from years of the Capitol's cut short broadcasts, the buzzing sound filled my ears like a fluid.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know the Odairs were expecting a guest," I felt flustered for no reason, but this man's appearance was startling. He sat before I motioned for him to; my hand hanging limply in the air, flaccid in it's futilely.

"I don't think they did either," his tone should have been expected. A low drawl, conducted in the same wavering strength of the Captiol's hordes. It was almost a snarl, whispered out from deep purple lips, curled almost in a peculiar humour. He looked as though he had ravaged a berry bush, for his lips were stained a pattern of deep purple and arterial red. If his clothes; a straight collared suit, hadn't been as dark as his eyes, I would have expected to seen more of the juices down his front.

He held out a manicured hand, offering out his name in a low drawl, a one "Certus Plath". His hands were cold, as though his blood was too afraid of offering its self to those sharpened talons.

"I'm sorry I can't help you, but I really don't know where they are. Finnick's in the Capitol."

"I know all about him. We're acquaintances if you will."

"You know the Capitol's time differs from here. By a few hours. The Capitol sleeps whilst the districts work," he continued.

"I didn't know that. But I guess that's the natural order."

"Indeed," my answer pleased his self-determined nobility enough to earn a smirk. "Must be why he's always so tired when he returns."

"You mean Finnick? He works a lot," I replied simply.

"Certainly."

I felt like a plump mouse in his hungry eyes. It was as though he was testing me, withholding something important that I couldn't determine. He was a man from the Capitol and so I assumed he was in connection with Finnick.

His roving eyes only feed my rapidly evolving concerns.

"Has something happened to Finnick?"

"No, not quite. Well, something always happens to Mr Odair." The curl of his words was unsettling, sending churning waves through my stomach.

He rose slowly, as though doing so would smooth out the creases of his suit without the need for effort. He'd come almost as quickly as he'd came, and his fleeting visit confused me.

"Tomorrow will be your last Reaping, will it not?" I was startled at how he knew. I hardly looked my age and even an educated guess would have thought I was younger.

"Yes," I replied curtly.

"Good day Miss Cresta." He bowed his head and made for the doorway.

"Annie" I prompted, causing him to turn.

"Such a delicate name" he mused, but before finally leaving, opened his mouth once again. "Surely it shouldn't be sullied in between such dirty sheets. I don't think anyone would be pleased to hear another's name."

The impact of his words did not hit me until the reverberations of the closing door had long died in my ears.

.

_The sky wasn't big enough for us all. _

_Us stars, he deemed us to be. _

He found me curled up in his bed. I didn't usually act so pathetic, but I felt another cycle of unaffectionate confusion come over me. Certus Plath's words spun about in my head like an angry wasp, batting between my ears in a brutish manner.

"_Just as your boy talks, so do others."_

His arms greeted my stomach with warmth, and instantly I felt imbued with a revolutionary feeling of order.

I was face to face with some manifestation of anxiety and paralysed hesitation. Should I tell him of my early encounter, or perhaps leave myself open and individual in facing the consequences.

I found the reel of rope I had given him years ago stashed under his pillow and for hours wound it about my hands mindlessly.

When he found me there, lying on top of her sheets, constructing a boat's bevy of knots, he didn't say a word. Only wrapped him self around me, just as the rope did in my hands

"What are you thinking?" He whispered into my hair.

"I'm seeing if you were right," I murmured.

"About what Annie?"

"Thinking of nets. Seeing if it really does distract you," my voice felt hoarse; worn and aged.

"And?"

"It's better when you have a rope in hand," I replied.

"I can't knot like you do." For the first time in what felt like days I smiled. I was dazed and miserably confused. It was all so sudden, as though I'd denied the reaping and was forcibly facing the full reality.

"I'm just making it up. They're not real knots."

"A knot's a knot," he stated.

I didn't feel it, the fear, when he held me. It was as though he kept me still, not just physically, but emotionally too.

The rope was still in my hand, attempting to create a more complex architecture. It stilled me, and just as he had promised, it distracted me from all the things that threatened to crush me.

"You were right." I turned in his arms to tuck my head under his chest, finding comfort in the tangible rise of his breathing.

"You've got to trust me in these things Annie," he chided lightly, smiling as he closed his eyes.

"I do," I whispered.

.

I rose sluggishly to the call of the morning.

Finnick was already gone, off no doubt to be preened for the cameras. I preferred the look of him at first morning light; bedraggled and hazy, his head-hanging limp as though his great mop of hair carried great weight.

Alone I dressed and over loaves of granite, I made my way to join the filling crowd before the Justice hall.

Our delegate had aged over the years, her body filling out to match the once overtly large doll head. A deep, sensual shade of orange was her pick this year, staining her hair and skin from her scalp to her sternum. Below that, the dye dribbled down her like rivets of rain; as though she was the unfortunate prey of a seagull. Veins of silk worked their way through her startling hair, then, like true circulation, wrapped around her body, constricting her skin in a corseted manner.

When she bared her teeth, I could see that they too had been stained the same colour as cooked crab shell.

I could feel the distress in the rapid beat of my heart. It hurt to breath almost, but only the sight of Finnick; his face stoically poised kept me from running.

I just had to last this one time. I'd survived the six Reapings, and so by all probability, I still stood a chance of not being chosen. My name was in there the minimum amount of times I reminded myself. I could do this. The odds were in my favour, surely?

The Capitol's presentation was running now.

I thought of rope. Of red, raw rope, bound around my fingers with the potential to bind a million different ways.

There was a sudden coarseness to the wind. It picked up and carried through the plaited tendrils of hair and the long cotton skirts, creating a ripple of effect through the crowd.

I was tying ropes as I traversed the paths drawn by the previous travellers of my mind. Finnick was ahead of me, and each face of the crowd was just another break in the waves, a blade of grass lit but the hot, orange sun above.

I missed the name as it was first called out.

My mind refused to accept, to acknowledge, to even recognize the name I had heard a thousand times before.

'_Annie Cresta'_

I looked only to him. His crown was gilt with sweat.

My blood had been exchanged with ice water, the salt of the sea drained from my skin as I tried desperately to make sense of the curse my name had now become.

I drew myself up and received my call of fate.

.

_Leoline Curl had a ritual of once again delving into the dish of names after each reaping. _

_Between her comfortable sea of undulating sheets each night there was often a stirring of faint guilt. She wasn't used to feeling such things; the drink and food she repeatedly gorged and emptied herself upon numbed all thoughts but self-importance. That was perhaps why her job as delegate waked such feelings; she was starved of the Captiol's luxuries and began to detox from the decadence. _

_To quell this foreign malignancy of guilt she began the habit of picking out a few more slips after the Reaping, reading out the names of those she believed, by her hand, she had saved. _

_In the ridiculously sparsely furnished room in the Justice hall, she clutched to bowl, resting it on her knees as though it were her child. _

_Her tapered fingers unpeeled the small slip of paper once again. _

_The two words confused her._

'_Annie Cresta'_

_Perhaps there was a mistake, she reasoned in her polluted mind, and so languidly selected another slip. _

_Annie Cresta's name unfurled before her a thousand times. _

_Annie Cresta's name was the only one in the bowl. _


	17. Chase Me Through the Rain

**XVII. Chase Me Through the Rain.**

**.**

'_Annie Cresta' _

_The name is unmistakable; as the intonation of the District 4's overtly orange delegate's voice is blasted out across the crowd. _

_The name is carried amongst the sea of bobbing heads in flutters of sorrow, pity and relief. _

_Eyes are searching, a cry wails out, a mothers scream for the death sentence tolled upon her child._

_The name is unmistakable to my ears; my feet feel faint, my heart is beating more than ever before. _

'_Annie Cresta' is called out again to the searching crowd._

_Their eyes, as though all at once, find my face._

_I can see him already on the stand, but I can't force myself to catch his eye, to see how his face might have contorted. _

_I step forwards to receive the name, my name, and the cruel hand that fate has dealt me. _

.

Disenchanted by my truculent sentence, I faced the teeth of such a game, the beast with the slobbering jaws. I could already feel the great tongue of it about me, throttling my protesting voice, as it abused my body with a thousand different potentials.

The lion and the ram. Both lascivious and brave; it was a succulent beast that not only threatened to tear us to pieces but to steal our innocence as though defiling us.

It felt it there, as I sat alone in the empty holding room. The walls were blank with tiles, suited to represent our district even where the water did not reach. A bookcase held a menagerie of useless commendations that attracted my interest for only a second.

After almost a half hour of waiting, I had reserved myself to sitting in a chair I had angled at the window. It had been painted shut, but I was sure if I was truly desperate I could pry it open.

To kill myself now, would that be so insulting a fate? In comparison no, but I knew the consequences. Ten years ago Janie Cormack had been found in her Capitol room, hung from the neck by the cord of her bathrobe. She'd been fourteen and petrified. I was suddenly sympathetic to her plight.

They'd replaced her quickly with her younger sister, a girl of only twelve. They'd dressed her up; stuffed her chest and painted age onto her face to resemble that of her late sister. I'd only known because the Cormacks used to have a stall next to ours. Used to; the annihilation of their offspring had sent the parents skyward.

The sisters had been pleasant, until they'd been bound and throttled by silk; a spear sent through the youngest chest, the countless heartbreaks splattering out across her breast.

I could feel the isolation creeping into my corneas once again. The ripples of my emerging madness were making themselves known; I could hardly deny them now. All they wanted was to be accepted, but I was afraid of doing so. That was a futile thought now.

The shadows throbbed about me as I tried to steady my breathing as I heard the door behind me open.

I wasn't sure if it was his conscience restricting him from moving, denying me of feeling his touch; a dead girl deserved no love.

He gave me a vision of the simple life, the one I could no longer have.

"Fuck Annie." I'd never heard him swear before, but the situation seemed to warrant it.

"Fuck - fuck." He just kept repeating over and over, his eyes wide as they searched he face, his hand jerking by his sides as though he was restraining himself from lashing out.

"I don't know what to do," I whispered, scared to admit how lost I really was.

Finally life filtered back into his limbs and he crossed the room sluggishly, lifting me up into his arms so that he could settle in the chair, my limp body now cradled in his lap.

Gravity itself defied us. I could feel it about my shoulders, pulling me down so that it might bury me already in the sandy earth of my homeland.

"You and Nils just have to stick together," he mumbled into my hair, his hand tracing patterns in my arms as though he could claim and keep it.

The air caught in my throat when my brain finally processed the identity of the other tribute.

Nils Crane, the unfortunate twin.

He'd lost his other half to the same torment and now in such a succinct and cyclical manner, he had been called up too. He was a tall but humble soul, loyal to his ailing mother and stubborn against authority. The true meaning of the games drove a hole in my stomach with the realization that one or both of us would never return back home. He had nearly escaped the Reaping as well; his once shared birthdate a few fatal days short.

I began to shake at the thought of that lonely boy in the other room. Finnick's arms held me tight but they didn't matter at all now; he couldn't keep me in his grasp forever. I was weak to the distress that faced me and no matter how much I might beg and plead; I was damned.

And if I were to keep hold of Finnick any longer I might pull him down too. I couldn't do that to him. For such a lovely heart to be invested in such spoiled stock. I was doomed and he was deluded if he thought otherwise.

"I can't do this Finnick."

"Annie-" he soothed.

"I can't do this. I can't do this. I just - can't," my voice began to trail off.

"I'm not coming out alive. I'm just not." I repeated myself over and over as though doing so would hurry up the pain soon to come.

"And that's why I can't do this to you."

"Annie please."

"We've had our time Finnick, but now it's coming to an end. I'll be gone soon but you'll still be here."

"Annie, do not say that."

"It's true. It's true, it's true, it's true." My voice tailed off, but no tears came. I was dried up already, drained of everything. I willed them on. I wanted to choke on them, hot and salty tears, like my beloved sea, the sea I would never bathe in again.

.

I think the pressure of it all was the reason the explosions began.

Like puffs of chalk, they spread across my eyes, as my lids desperately tried to squeeze shut. The waters of my whites were not enough to dissolve them and they remained even after I had blinked several times.

Cataclysms across my corneas.

The music churned up too, quietly at first. It was as though it was played from behind my head, so that I had to twist it round suddenly to try catch sight of the source. I knew where it was from, that mourning call. It was the song of the dead that which was sung as a body is borne out to sea.

"What was it like watching me? How can I do it with you," He asked me when we were alone.

We lay like two lost lovers out at sea, clinging to our raft of starched sheets. We watched the night proceed through the shuttered windows of the train, the lights of the district we now passed through, sending a rhythmic stream of undulating strips along the carpeted floor.

His thumb paced across my cheek as though trying to softly dig through the butter of my skin. My cheekbone was more resilient than that and his touch was a tattoo within me.

I did not know if I were now the lucky party; for I had seen him safely through the games and now relished in the outcome, but for him, uncertainty about my fate still rang true.

I could be anyone's ghost.

"You said if we never grow up, then we'll never grow old"

"Growing old is the only thing I've ever really wanted,"

.

_Slow, slow me down. _ _Her blood is upon my crown. _

I knew I was dreaming for there was such strangeness and charm.

There was a child upon my arm, then on my hip, and then through confusion in my belly once more.

They all appeared at once and I felt the weight of their tiny forms about my rib and hipbones.

The one at my hip, it's arms encircled around my neck, it's legs curling under my swollen stomach. It's eyes were demanding, but it made no sound.

It's sister, as I was sure by her long blonde hair, trailed ahead of us. She was no larger than a loaf of bread at times. And we were walking along a hard and country road, she'd stray to the cliff side. I called to her many times, I felt it in my throat, but she could not hear me. Only the crows call of my stomach, a keening wail belonging to a chick, could turn her. Her head would snap round by the neck to examine me. Her eyes were blank but held a curious violet colour to them and I felt as though she was chiding me. There was a burning ferocity in that child, almost as strong as the petulance building in the mute child at my hip.

Suddenly the rain pelted down and from each crater of impact, a tree sprung into life.

I wasn't asking for a storm.

We were soon enclosed in foliage, and the boy missing from my hip. He was with her now.

As she hacked away at her brother's neck over and over again, each time the two of them cyclically separating and reforming the ligaments of his throat.

Someone was dragging me away by the collar.

The knife pressed into my thigh, down to the hilt.

Through fire and brimstone. My skin burnt and sealed the knife still in, until finally, my neck snapped with the smoke.

_Close your ears; let's take a look at your virtue. _

_The lonely are delicate, blow over by wasps. _

.

I wasn't prepared for the Capitol. Crossing from the lower coast to reach the mountains that shielded the epicentre of a city took a few nights. I imagined out there the other eleven trains, all bearing the meat for the slaughter. How scared they must all be. Children snatched away from their homes, away from their mothers.

I spent it drifting between stages of sleep, my legs twitching about, constantly roving as though the motions of it would shift the cold contact of the sheets. The pillows too were too plump and too many in number. I felt suffocated and could find no comfortable way in which to twist my neck.

Finnick remained beside me, there to remind me of our tangible situation. With our distance from the sea the temperature dropped and I found myself at a loss. My nights had always been humid and warm. Even when there was rain, I barely needed a single sheet. But now I felt the absence of my district's warm embrace.

Nights were lost to travel and soon my mind was too. Come sunrise Finnick always left, the duty of appearances causing a heavy frown upon his young face.

I found Nils in the food cart as the morning light began to filter through my mind and ignite the filaments needed to ready myself. He hunched over the table as though someone might soon steal his food, a posture I was far too accustomed to seeing.

He was a tall boy; already able to meet Finnick's eye line despite being younger. He was unlike us both, as his hair was the colour of dark slate, as though his hair was permanently wet, but without the moisture. He had a curious face, not unkind but weary; gone was the freshness of his age. But his eyes still held the sea and in his gaze, I found a comfort. We'd grown up together but had never been so close. I knew he had an honest temperament and was not prone to the outbursts of adolescence. All movements were measured, not out of distrust or tactics, but as an upkeep of self-preservation. He was his mother's livelihood, and he'd kept himself strong for her.

I gave him a faint smile as I sat across from him, but there was no effort behind it. He deserved all the pleasantries in the world but I wasn't going to simper to him.

"Madness, in't it?" He had the warm accent of the southern seas and I was glad to hear his voice.

"I guess so."

"You haven't made sense of it yet either?" He gave me a knowledgeable look and I shared the feeling of redundancy with him.

"Did you manage any sleep?" I asked quietly, trying to strike up any form of conversation salvageable.

"A little, here and there. No much. You?"

"Likewise." The dark stains beneath both our eyes betrayed us.

"I would have thought the train would be like a rocking boat, but it ain't nothing like it," he commented, looking down into his pool of milky porridge with a look of disappointment.

"I would have liked that too." I felt home sick now. I wanted to be on unsteady ground, or no ground at all. Instead I was trapped in this seamless room, with no indication of any movement.

We made it to the Capitol by nightfall and we greeted by a flock of the most magnificent birds.

I felt like a spectator, watching them through the glass windows as they fluttered and squawked, their motions muted by our short distance. It was like entering a whole new world. One that was clean and fresh, though the whole place was dedicated to painted appearances. They were pouring down my throat, into my lungs to lodge between my ribs like a mortar.

And then I realized. I was not the one looking out at them; they were looking in at me. Like a caged animal, I was wheeled out in front of them, for all to examine and judge. I was a pleasant thing to look at; like a rabbit before the hounds. They wanted to see me whole so they could fully relish the sight of my body torn to pieces. My blood would soon paint their cheeks. But no sooner as I had touched them, I'd be wiped away. I was a blush, a mark, not even a stain. I was ephemeral, and they only wanted to see me before I was gone. From this world, from their memories, from their fancy.

I couldn't breath; their feathers and silk were bound around my neck. A pressure on my shoulder brought me back to the surface. Nils, warm and strong, stood behind me.

"We'll do it together. I won't let you drown Annie."

My name felt safe in his mouth, and I allowed my heart to rest.

.

I first met my stylist mere hours before the customary parade. I'd been pandered about by everybody other than him and had eventually reserved myself to never seeing him appear. Strangely I did not begrudge the thought. Already I felt consumed by the ambrosial delights of the Capitol, and it was making me feel sick. It was a feeling alike to swallowing far too much seawater. I felt unnaturally bloated and could not shake the taste of bile and salt from my mouth.

His deflated face was worn and gaunt, his head far too enlarged for his body. His skin was cratered, as though he'd pockmarked his face on purpose, so as to resemble the moon. His powder blue suit was like a singular, fluid ripple, never creasing, but crumbling at almost every turn of his thin joints. His eyes were dull like black rock, like two pits in his face.

Without permission he underdressed me and I was left cold and alone in the room, as he slipped away. He returned with a single white slip of fabric, and quick to cover myself, I eagerly grabbed it. As I struggled to work out how to put it on, he circled me as a lion would with its meal, inspecting my plucked and peeled skin. The regimes I'd been put through in the name of presentation were almost tortuous, but I knew not to complain. Never had so much attention been paid to my well-being, and I twisted my perception to seen it almost as a luxury.

"You have good collarbones," he commented.

"Thank you," I mumbled, not sure if it were a compliment.

"They're predominant."

"Is that a good thing?" To me they were a sign of starvation, of subservience and the oppression of my body's basic needs. I'm not sure if this man even knew what absence was.

"Anything that's predominant is a good thing in the Capitol."

The skin-tight suit was on. My legs were fully exposed, but it covered my stomach and continued to rise up to circle about my neck.

"Can you step up here?" He held out a pale hand and helped me step up onto a small raised cylinder. His skin was surprisingly warm and smooth and I felt myself falter a little at his small kindness.

"Thank you," I whispered again.

"You don't hear that word much in the Games," he remarked, his voice measured, but with the barest hint of longing. I could feel his hands moving about, pinpricks of pressure about the suit. He was like smoke, spreading quickly, the skill of his hand passing about my torso. Once that was done he moved onto my legs and arm, dabbing them with some substance I did not care to look at. I turned my head up to the ceiling and tried to distract myself, only lowering it so his could begin to work on my face and hair.

Finally, he turned me around to let me look at my reflection.

I was still wearing the strapless white leotard, but it had been transformed. It was now encrusted with thousands of pearls. They were stitched in with hair thin thread, in the patterns and swirls of the ebb and flow of the waves and tide.

The brilliant white of my outfit made me self-conscious of the flatness of my chest, the scrawniness of my knees and the visible carriage of my ribs. Eighteen years of an unreliable and often absent diet have dealt their damage. But as I moved about, angling my slight hips and rotating to get a better look I could see as the muscles in my legs and upper arms contracted and relaxed. Here I saw the sea's touch. A life-spent swimming, spent under water fighting the instinct to surface. I still had something.

My limbs were showered in a thousand sliver freckles, spots of ill-used wealth smothered in amongst the other scales and pearls glued to the sides of my thighs and upper arms. I looked absurd, but at the same time it was a stark transformation. Gone was the girl's body I was so used to. I had become mercurial, like the water I was meant to be, I had changed.

But still, to my own unembellished eye, I looked like the ill bride of a trout. A girl in her mother's shoes; far too small and already destined to fall.

Little bits of unnaturally green coral were woven into the careful waves of my hair, to match the light jade coloured blush spread thickly about my cheeks.

Before my eyes I had ulcerated into a faux token of my district. Was this how Capitol deluded themselves into believing how we live? Surround by coral and pearls?

"You don't like it?"

"I never said that," I dismissed quickly, not wanting to offend the one man who might in any way help me live.

"Your eyes did."

I faltered. I felt so drawn up, so polished and lacquered that my outer shell had frozen, whilst I was breaking on the inside. I felt angry, angry that the man should even take umbrage to the fact that I disliked my situation.

"You'll never get sponsors which such a scowl."

"I don't care for sponsors. I don't want people to look at me and judge, to examine and decide whether I look good enough for their luxuries."

"That's what you should want."

"But I don't. I'm doomed, and I'd rather not be given any false hope."

"And I'd rather not be the one to give it to you. But despite what you think I'd rather not see you sullied by what's to come. At least we have that in common."

"I'm nothing like you," I spoke defiantly, "Because, quite simply, I'm nothing _to _you. Just another clothes horse, led out to the slaughter. Do you think making me look pretty will save my skin?"

I stepped down from the platform, the heel of my glass shoes uncomfortable. I winched as I tried to walk, clenching my fists, trying desperately to retain some modicum of control.

"Don't cry," he commanded, following each of my flinching steps.

"Crying's a waste. Unlike you, I don't like wasting things," I turned to meet his gaze.

He observed me for a minute, his face searching mine for a falter of the lip or eye.

"You're right, I've dressed countless children. All of whom are dead now, gone. But not a single one meant _nothing _to me." His voice was steady, unwavering; as though this was a truth he had told himself many times.

His hands were about my hair, brushing away stray filaments.

"I count the losses in my own fashion."

With his smooth thumb, he wiped away a layer of my cheek's embellishment.

"Now you'll get those sponsors."

My eyes met his, my own sea against his pitch. Before I had counted them as dull and flat, but I saw now that they weren't. They were like tunnels, deep cavernous holes, dug by the looks of a thousand desperate children.

"You never told me your name," I asked quietly.

"_Crestal_," his thumb left my cheek, but I did not feel alone. "We have more in common than you choose to believe."

As he left the countless craters upon his face gleamed briefly, and then I saw it. Like the fresh dug earth of a shallow grave, my face would mark my future, whilst his marked his past.

.

I was still the trout's bride and Nils had been dressed to be my groom. His hair had been slicked back and was dripping somehow, eternally cascading down the small white fins glued to his spine. His neck was smooth and exposed. For a moment I admire how strong it was. His head was firmly attached to his body, he was grounded and no matter what surrounded him, he hadn't yet let the games get to him.

He humoured me with a weary smirk, giving a twirl of his pearly body before walking towards me, past the countless other pairs. This was the first time I'd seen all the tributes together, and it was an uncomfortable affair. There was an evident age divide, most tributes being at either end of the selection range. Eyes roved about the enclosed space as we all made for the aligned chariots, everyone sizing up the others, looking for weakness, the small cracks in our made up armour. I knew now I could not falter, not in this sea of hot desperation, I could not drown.

And then we were off.

I felt his hand, and together we processed out into the blinding white jaws of the beast.


	18. Unfinished Sympathy

**XVIII. Unfinished Sympathy.**

.

My eye still burnt with the lights. I could not shake the glare from my retinas and a hot white block of transitional shapes flashed across my eyes, as the deafening roar of the crowd still resounded in my ears.

I sat alone and undressed, perched on the end of my bed, trying to make sense of my surroundings. I had been stunned by the display of drums and hearts, as each member of the baying crowd had each wanted to scream louder than the other.

There was a feeling between my ribs. I would never breath again. Smoke soiled my lungs, drifted between the branches of my once delicate organ, a pair of twins feed only upon pure sea air. Now they were paralyzed, each alveoli stunted in its one sole purpose. I was deflated, but my body refused to fill.

I felt it now, more than ever before. The repudiation of society; a reaction against the ubiquitous star system.

I wanted my Finnick, but he was nowhere to be found. The silken sheets of the vast bed did not comfort me. I was alone in the darkness; an absence, a presence, suffocating as smoke. The mantle of such a mood pressed down upon my crown.

I watched the shadows birth and dance about his feet as he slowly crossed the floor towards me. My brain didn't acknowledge him though until I felt the skin of the bed beside me sink and his hand, light as gossamer trace my cheek.

We were two bodies, so different, yet we matched each other. We did not fit together perfectly, but wordless we knew how to move to meet; how my leg might curl around him to draw him close, both his hands about my face. Every one of his touches was new. I never forgot the last, but I was always amazed at how he felt. My brain still did not realize that before me, Finnick lay, and that he was mine. How had I ever deserved this? Perhaps my damnation to the game was penance for our short bliss.

"The only thing that hasn't changed. My moon," I whispered out into the quiet. I could see her through the skylight, and from my lying positioning in Finnick's arms, bathing in her light.

"The smog covers everything else, but it's stubborn enough to shine through. A little like you," he smiled. His voice sounded worn and ever so slightly slurred.

"Are you being metaphorical?"

"You were very shiny tonight. Literally. And I heard you and Crestal got alone. Eventually," he smirked.

"Was he your stylist?"

"No. He was Lieve's," his voice fell hushed, a gentle reservation in the way he said her name, as though handling something very small and fragile.

"He doesn't seem to have had any -," I couldn't swallow the word.

"You'll be his first," he assured, his lips pressing to my forehead. I wish his could push such hope past my skull and into my brain.

"Finnick, I don't think so," I confided.

"I will do everything in my power to make sure you are."

"Have you-," I asked quietly. I'd already smelt her on him, already seen the crumple of his shirt and roughness of his hair. I did not begrudge this, only wished I could have asked otherwise. Before I knew he was forced through threat, but now it seemed he was doing it for me.

Certus Plath's spider thin words spun out in the air before me, and I remember the last time I had mixed with Finnick's business.

Tenderly I kissed his eyelids, traced the slope of his nose with my lips, before finally meeting his mouth.

"Annie -," he murmured.

"I don't care who came before me, but I'll always make sure I'll be your last," I promised.

"I love you, and I always will." I promised, "No matter what adversities we may go through, whatever may happen; I will chose to remember this. You, me and this bed beneath us. I chose to remember _this_. And I always will. I love you. Remember that. And even when I'm gone. When we both are. I will always love you. Present tense. Never past. Our love, my love for you will always be in present tense."

.

The next morning I found myself alone and without a blissful embrace.

The room around me was cavernous and painted a defying grey. It was as though they'd carved it from stone, as though imprisoning us in a mountain might steel our hearts to the fight ahead.

The floor space was filled with an overwhelming display of different stations, comprising of several different skill sets. I could see the majority of the other tributes eyes were drawn to those that boasted weaponry, and so I took the time instead to look at the others.

I moved about by myself, noticing how Nils had taken a similar approach, yet through our shared glances I knew it was best to stay apart. District 4 produced Careers, but I had no such intension of becoming one. To stick together, though it might be comforting, could show us up as a threat to others. I'd seen enough games to know that groups never lasted; there was only ever one victor.

I was finding my district more of a disadvantage at this point. I'd never really learnt how to make a fire from scrub, and the sea had produced my fruits, not bushes. Scales did not dictate safety, only teeth; and so I found myself at a loss to begin with when discerning poisonous berries.

A large pillar, crenulated by various groves and rivets, filled the centre of the room, forcing the herd to move round in a cyclical manner. It also distracted us from one another, as at most points we couldn't see across from us, the menacing sound of clashing arms wavering towards my curious ears.

I had to admit, I was more intrigued by the other tributes than the stations.

The pair from District 1 were a measured couple. Both I guessed were the same age as me, and the plump cherubic lips smeared rosily across both their faces had me mistaking them as relations. Their hair looked as though it had been smeared by charcoal, but the boy sported a less severe shade, suiting the soft sculpt of his chin.

The girl, Garnet, had a bloodless face. Tight and waxy her pallor seemed to radiate umbra. The way her oddly coloured eyes commanded the room created a succession of uneasy waves in my stomach. There was no trace of smirk rippling through those lips, only defiance to all those around her, a tightness in her jaw that allowed no relaxation for emotion.

Next to her lulled a large-headed girl, one who I'd come to learn was named Oisha. An aureate blush coloured her pale cheeks, a small nose settled delicately between them. Her eyes made the hues of her face seem dull in comparison; for they were a shade of blue I had never seen before. It was the kind chipped from large bergs of ice. Her hair was spun like glass, a translucent fabrication that sat about her scalp like live wires. She looked far younger than her companions, and it was only the large number 2 scrawled on her chest, that I knew why she was tolerated. There was an unbridled energy within her, but one I sensed was not to be approached. Knives, scythes and swords passed through her small hands like toys, as though she couldn't decide which was the shiniest. There was a glimmer in her eyes I'd only seen possessed by magpies.

The boy next to her, Searl, dominated the small pack of four with his height. His head had been given a severe shave, so close that I couldn't discern what colour his hair truly was. He acted more like a climbing frame for Oisha, as she wormed her way around his legs and shoulders in a constant display of territory.

I saw as Nils' arm was caught by the deft hand of the District 1 boy; their mouths beginning to move in rapid conversation. Oisha was swift in noticing the dismay in my tightened jaw; her eyes roving round like buzzards to settle of their prey.

Quickly trying to distance myself, I was drawn to the large climbing structure. It was easy enough to scale, and the methodical motions of grappling with the handholds distracted my mind and let it settle on the menial task of gaining height.

I was not far up before I felt a hand about my ankle and suddenly the world was turned upside down. I hit the floor below me with a smack, a feeling that almost transformed into a sound as it reverberated through my bones. I could feel each individual vertebrae shudder as sister greeted sister, sharing their pain over synapses. The air was pushed out from my lungs as my ribcage struggled to handle the force of impact, blood rushing in to fill the space of the empty wind. Gasping bloody mouthfuls I tried to right myself.

Blood was in my mouth, warm and thick. Like a useless soup, I spat it out, letting it fall and splatter grotesquely out across the floor.

It was the first flower I'd seen in a long time. Just like my wounded tongue, its petals were thick and humid, as the mix of spittle and blood spread out across the tiles. My mouth had an iron tang to it; my first taste of salt in days, and my senses welcomed it strangely.

The world spun around me, two blue spectres darting out and then back, as though beckoning me from the fog.

Finally, I caught the gaze of that wide-eyed girl. Her shoulders spasmed with shakes as her head was thrown about by the weight of her hair. Her whites were shot with electric fingers, radiating out to cup that iris full of that shocking blue.

There was laughter in her throat and my weak neck was already in her jaws.

.

The wait before scoring was staggering my heart. It felt as though a hook had clawed at my diagram and I couldn't quite catch my breath.

"_Surprise them. That's all you need to do" _Finnick's words were of no comfort to me now. I was a very unsurprising person, my actions always as predicable as the gravitational path of water.

The path of water that had made it's self into the training room. The pool was a substantial size, and as it would seem, had risen up from the floor itself. It's translucent walls allowed a clear view into the hazy waters, and I could already tell they expected me to swim for them. I'd already put on such a lacklustre performance in previous days; perhaps they were trying to entice some modicum of skill from me.

_Surprise them._

The large pillar still stood, and I was struck by an idea.

With no hands to pull me down this time my ascent should have been easier. But there were no handhelds this time, only deep groves dug into the granite wall. But they were alike enough to the fissures of a cliff face, and stuffing my balled fist into the small gap, I began the free climb. The scaling made my unbound hands hurt, but I knew I had to make more height if I wished my back to in anyway survive.

_I've done this a thousand times. Hand, foot, hand, foot. _

_We climb the cliff to swim the sea._

I'd made it. Twenty feet up.

No wind, no surf. Silence and objectivity.

I took once glance behind me and leapt back into the void.

.

"How will you dress me this time?" I asked as Crestal tended to my back. With a single fluid movement, I was encased in silk, the excess length of my dress pooling about my feet.

"How will I _address _you this time? As Annie. As always."

"Will you?" I smiled as he feigned ignorance to my question with his clever mouth.

"Well I wouldn't call you victor just yet." I thought he might be addressing the gathering below my neck the attention he was paying it.

"You think I can win?" I asked in a hollow voice.

"Very few are intelligent enough to doubt their weaknesses." Though replying to me, he still did not meet my eyes.

"But still they have them."

"Doubt has an element of acceptance to it. And with acceptation comes, progression," he answered methodically.

"You think I have weaknesses?" I searched his face for honesty.

"There is no place for humanity or mercy in these games." He turned my shoulders so that I could look in the mirror.

White. Virginal white. Unblemished and untouched, not a single breath of rust about my breast. I was lacquered in milk. The dress curled round my slight frame like a whisper, held up by a delicate web of frost-thin lacing, glued to my sternum so as to frame the mantle of my collarbones.

"I look like the moon," I whispered, taken aback by the sharpness of the white.

"Silent now. I need to fix your face," he commanded.

Before he could poke me in the eye, I closed my lids, already heavy with powered delights. I could feel the pattern of the brush as he wiped it across, embellishing my eyes much further than necessary.

"Frowns are ugly," he quipped as my redrawn brows creased with defiance. I could only bite my stained in repression, still keeping my eyes clenched shut.

"And mock fragility is just puerile."

He'd commanded me not to speak and so all I could do was clench my jaw till it hurt

"Tenacity. Now that is valuable." I finally opened my eyes to stare him down from under the dark canopy of lashes. His face had softened in the time it had been absent from my sight.

There was so much we both wanted to say, to confide and confess, but all words were lost. I took a final forlorn look in the mirror before moving to the call for the tributes resonated out.

"Why do you like my collarbones so much?" I paused at the door, turning to look back at him one time.

"Because collarbones are the foundation of a strong neck," he replied firmly.

"I have a very thin neck."

"Thin doesn't mean weak. The neck is the most important part of the body. Any other appendage can be lost, tossed to the gutter and yet you can still crawl onwards. You lose you head. All those memories, all those thoughts, all those secrets, they'd come all spilling out."

From down the hall I could see the flickering lights.

"And we don't want that to happen?" I searched his face for the answer.

"Play the game Annie. Intelligence is survival." I nodded and made forwards to the call of my name.

Flickerman was wearing his usual grandiloquent adornments. Jewels, the size of beetles scurried across his face, their footfall marked by the passage of tiny buds of glitter, flourishing across his face like the pox.

Loquacious as always he wasted no time in my introduction. I was just one of many. One that would be soon thrown to the wind, to be battered about by gales of uncertainty.

"So Miss Cresta. Tell me first. What's so different about the Capitol? What's different back in District 4?" The audience, that flurry of many-faced birds again, lapped it up like cream, loving the faux exoticness of my home.

"I miss the smell of sea grass. The capitol smells so different," I replied firmly, my brain only really allowing the function of short answers under the bright lights.

"Annie Cresta, the _catfish." _Perhaps if Flickerman had any idea what the fish might actually look like, he'd know what he was calling me.

"I've had someone call me that before," I let slip.

"Oh really? May I ask who?' I lost the bait and he was eagerly snapping it up.

"A boy."

"A sweetheart perhaps? Back in your district?"

"I guess so." There was no point skirting around. If I admitted to it quickly enough he might not press the identity any further.

"What was it like saying your farewells?" That was a deep question for Caesar's usually superficial titterings.

"I've said goodbye to him many times -" I hesitated for a second "But I think this might've be my last."

A thousand blind eyes looked back up at me. I had just admitted defeat.

A question, a pause, a reply.

I felt like I had been punctured many times and I was still desperately trying to cover up all of my hollows, but the more their stared, the more I opened up. They were scoping up my organs and displaying them out so that all could weight and scale my heart.

_Once I was animal. I was a girl who had a song._

Here I was slaughtered, my stars ripped from my sternum and dug deep into the soles of my feet.

"A score of 8 in training. Not bad," he posed it as though he was giving me a great comfort.

"But not the best," I replied curtly.

"Humble?" He eyebrow danced, as though he was used to self-admitted weakness.

"Just aware of who I might be in competition with."

"Might be?"

"Right now it's all just a display of strengths. We're still yet to see other's weaknesses."

"And what about yours?"

"You've already seen those."

"So what'll come next?"

"My strengths."

I only prayed my nerve could be as brave as my mouth.


	19. Heaven is as Heaven Does

_Goodness, chapter 19? I feel as though I should have the Final Countdown playing as I post this. _

_A little unsure about whether or not to increase the rating on this chapter to M, so it would be lovely to hear what you all think. _**  
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.

**XIX. Heaven is as Heaven does.**

.

Living had become breathless.

I think the very weight of the food they were filling us with was holding me down. Stomach first they had a hand clasped around my innards restricting me from moving without losing breath.

I noticed that Garnet didn't eat much either. They liked the idea of forcing us together or forcing us apart. We ate together but slept alone, we trained together but dressed alone. We had all been selected together, but eventually we would all die alone.

Again we were in the training room for our final chance to test our strengths. Some had gone with mentors, but I had decided to stay. A few of the older victors lingered; Finnick stood stoically to the side. I watched as a slim built woman approached him. Her dark hair hung limply about her head, but she carried her chin in such as way that disregarded all formalities of appearances.

Johanna Mason

I'd seen her before, but we'd never spoken. I knew how close she was to Finnick but also how ruthless she could be. I watched as their mouths moved in gentle conversation. She was one of the few people Finnick relaxed around. His shoulders had been tensed and his back unnaturally straight for the short time we had been in the Capitol. But standing next to Johanna, he allowed his eyes to solely focus on her, exposing his back to others, as he never normally did.

She reminded me of a jackal. Whilst she too bought into the show of pseudo-strengths, there was an inconsolability about her, something that could not be soothed. Whilst she had revealed herself to be a remorseless killer in her own games, I wondered if perhaps that small fragile girl was still left in that lonely area, delicate and famish for comfort.

The hall was filled with sounds and yet I could not distract myself from them. Around me the flinching of loose arrows sounded like flight; the brace of Searl's axe clashed from across the room. Oisha and Garnet were comparing the weight of knives.

With distain I watched the girls from afar, judging with undignified fervour. Like clockwork they unfolded before me, as I tried to dissect their movements and in some way justify how and why they should kill and be killed.

Oisha: _(Humming) (Talking rapidly) (Smiling) (Tossing her head) (Standing up straight) (Walking round room) (Moving restlessly)_

Garnet: _(Watching) (Waiting) (Silent)_

I felt nauseated, continually so. No thought would leave my mind, as though as each blossomed, they developed spines and burrs that allowed them to find purchase in the felt of my mind.

My absent from reality perhaps explained how I had missed their passage towards my lonely station. Nils had become part of their pack, I couldn't be sure why, but I knew, just like myself, he yearned to belong somewhere. So far from the sea, we had both dried out and needed all the others to keep our gills working.

Oisha's face came very close to my own, her lashes like curlicues around her heavy eyes. Her skin was like stone; I could see all the little blue ice rivers hiding beneath the surface as they served up to her senses. Her nostrils flared in a fashion that made me think it might be hard for her to breath.

"Ann-nie." My name was not welcome in her mouth. Manhandled by her wayward sibilance it was segmented and issued forth through those pearly teeth, as though she were a child and teasing me. It was a mouth made for sighs. A wound upon her face, whose only use was to turn words into wind.

"Howd's it feel to be a career now, Ann-nie."

I looked to Nils.

"Am I?" It was a fact I had not been informed of.

"Don't be sill-ley." The critical role of those pearly teeth become clear as that small triangle of a tongue pressed up against them to stress those final syllables.

The language of my chemical mechanisms betrayed me; right down to my brazen knees. It was as though she was unzipping me, from my forehead down to the bow of my lips, down past my chin to crack open my stomach and see if it were truly made of steel.

Her delicate finger pressed to the small blossoming bruise by the crease of my left eye. Knuckle and socket had connected uncomfortably in my fall those few days earlier, gravity marking its claim across my face.

She pressed until it hurt, and whilst my heart had a cage to hide in, my face did not. Her unctuous manner of handling my name ground up between my molars, as we stared at each other, both of us daring the other to flinch first.

Finally both her finger and her face left my presence as she moved away to another station, following the others of her loose pack. My fingered traced my mark, moving to feel the lightest of indents her nails had left in my skin.

I knew I had been warned.

.

Night drew her cape across the sky and for a moment, I watched as the colours of peach and powered purple turned rotten and sour, as finally the fingers of fermented black appeared.

I hadn't seen much of Nils in the past few hours, realizing that he might be finalizing his thoughts by himself, and so I was surprised when he approached me.

I had taken up a seat by the tall window to watch the sunset fade, the twinkling lights of the Capitol marring the sight with their flamboyancy.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, settling down beside my crossed ankles. His large hand motioned out to touch the glass, sharing my feeling of entrapment. Yet again we were barred from touching what was real in this world.

"I feel numb. Like I haven't yet caught my breath." He nodded to my reply, his chest rising as though he was checking he still had working lungs.

"I just feel limp. Like there ain't nothing to do. But there should be. You get me?" He'd plucked the words right out of my mouth.

"Yeah." I turned to look at his face, fully taking in his features for the first time. I wanted to remember them, for when I was lost and had no eyes to see. "I had so much planned. So much that I left for tomorrow. And now that this is the time to do it, I just can't." I lapsed into silence, not wanting to remind myself again of how short and unlived my life had been.

"I'm going to make sure you have a tomorrow Annie." His words caught me off guard. I swallowed all my replies. I didn't know how to answer. I didn't want to. It was unfair of me to accept such a promise because of the price it demanded.

"What about your mother?" I replied, my voice already hollow.

"She passed away two weeks ago. The thoughts took her, and then the waves."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not. She's with my brother now, and I'll be with them soon as well. I have no loose threads. No worries going into the games. Mamam's gone, and that gives me peace. Gives me peace because I know she did fall into starvation or the looseness of others."

The air was hungry for noise, and stomaching us with closed mouths, silence once again consumed us. There was a vacancy in his mind. A spot untouched and unclaimed; a part of his life that had not know yet what survival was. He'd only ever been chased by friends and once, a brother. Never before had either of us been the prey. Already we were both relinquishing our attachment to our senses.

First would be our tongues to silence our screams, next our nerve endings would numb and we'd feel nothing as the smell and taste of our own blood made tidemarks in our lungs. We'd lose our sight last, lose sight of what it was like to live and to love. We'd know nothing more than those who slay, and those who had been slain. It was up to us which one we would become.

"Maybe it'll hurt less, because I won't feel anything." I mused, a thought that had no place in hanging limply in the air.

His fingered laced in mine but did not hold them. Instead he placed them gently on the tanned skin of his inner wrist.

"You still feel that?"

I nodded. His pulse was still there.

"Good."

.

There were no stars in the sky that night.

The bruise on my face reminded me of a happier time. The tiny vessels oozed out the last vestiges of my past life.

For some reason I didn't want it to fade. It marked me as living, that my body was still capable of bleeding, breathing and eventually healing. Soon such a state would pass and I'd be alone and rotting in a grave.

Just like my bruise, I didn't want to fade; not like all those others before me. I was a lonely child, and the feelings of the torment to come were burning circles in my stomach. The lining of my insides felt raw and in turmoil.

I needed a pail of rainwater to soothe the combustions inside me. I needed a whole lake. I would swallow it whole and let it drown me softly.

He was walking out from that shore before me

_Finnick._

Two gorgeous syllables.

Alone, I savoured the sound of it; tongue melting with the silence, the presence of such a delicacy like a barbiturate. The phonetics of my desire.

He understood even the dustiest corners of my mind; he washed them clean with his salty sea. He was the sea, my sea.

He was everything I wanted to be. Instead I had him to have and hold. I was a fall from his elegance. I was not a graceful person; I was stumbling paws and that stone in ones shoe. He was the ebb of the tide and the layer of froth left by sea foam. I was a crow call at 3 in the morning. He was lighting worth watching, worth discarding fear for. I was an awkward sadness, whilst his name was melancholia.

I found him in his room. It was just like the old, where I would work my way into his hiding places, though this time I came through a door and not a window.

Goosebumps rippled up my arm as my knocks upon his door echoed out. I'd be married to the games soon; stripped of all my innocence. I was to spill at the seams and I wanted him to hold me before I was lost.

And then there he was before me, no sleep in his eyes, only that perfected sadness I had seen so many times before.

The space between us was tangible, a thousand stars hanging motionless, sibilating the creaks of my chest. Caliginosity had come, but I could not yet put out my lights, for I had one last chance to reclaim that sin.

Finally I spoke. My last bold request.

"Make love to me," my voice could not get any quieter.

I had no more time left to hear him plead others, to bat me away again like that child he believed me to be.

But all he did was take my face in his hands, place his lips upon my own and guide me in.

.

_Inhale. Exhale. _

_Hot petal. _

_I've taken the pill. _

_Lost all sense of my brain, my feet, my scalp and everything in between. _

_But I'm not lost, for the first time. He has found me. _

_I'm bleeding, peeling open at the seams and falling into a frothy mess. _

_He'll have to reclaim me. _

_But he already does. _

_Again and again. _

_He both breaks me and reforms me. _

_Like crystal in his hands, he's clutching me too tightly, but the thrill is in the finality of closing the chasm. _

_I am that chasm. _

_He is my priest and I am the guilty prisoner. _

_He forgives me as I try not to weep at the pain of my sin._

_Hot salt water douses our heads as though our bodies cry in the exultation of redemption._

_I am sold, my price. _

_A small stain of blood, the only thing left I own_

_Inhale. Exhale. _

_._

Palm to palm. Chest to chest.

Complete.

My crevices were filled, the hollows I never loved to approve with touch. Apprehension was a mere hesitation of the past.

All I wanted to do was dance with him on an empty beach.

All I wanted was potential, to be, to live, to breathe.

I liked my body with his, I felt better, my muscles stronger, my mind more intuitive, as though the sun of his hair feed the nerves in my brain and made them sharper.

Between the sheets I turned to watch his face.

"I always knew you'd outlive me. It was just a simple fact; after seeing you, I knew. And I take comfort from that. Because the thought of being alone, without you," I said, tracing the line of his jaw.

"But you'll live. You have to," he replied firmly.

"I don't want to die alone Finnick." I'd never felt so powerless.

"You're going to live. Because we're going to get married and have lots of babies." He couldn't even smile at the thought of it. It was a stern promise.

"Perseus and Andromeda. Did they stay together?"

"Forever," he whispered.

"And did they have babies?"

"A whole sky full." The smile at last emerged.

I laughed through the tears.

"I know we're all born just so we can die. Bread like cattle. And that they say, born alone, die alone. I want to die beside you. What a lovely dream that would be." I wanted to close my eyes and fall to sleep, but I couldn't let myself waste a single second of his presence.

No amount of ire in my veins could give me this sensation. I was just dead space, waiting to be cleared away.

"This is goodbye." I knew it well.

"Not just yet." His voice was pleading.

"You're alive and you will be for many more years. So use it. I didn't want to be stupid enough to believe you - you, precious you would waste your breath on me. But you did." I was still amazed by it. That a man like Finnick could ever love me. I did not deserve it, and yet somehow, here he lay before me. "Don't hurt yourself. Not over me. Promise? Promise you'll live long enough for the two of us." My finger now wandered lightly over the skin of his neck, up over the lip of his shoulder.

"I love you. Remember that. Remember that and for me it'll be enough." I drew myself closer as I could ever be.

"Enough?"

"Enough to last me. Enough to help me when I go." I whispered into his neck.

"You're not going anywhere." He promised with a kiss to my crown.

"We both know the odds and their outcomes."

The sound of sublimity unleashed a meaning. I would never deliver such discrete catharsis as this.

The tender fibres of my heart bleeding through another's wounds.

"Promise me you'll be okay?"

"Only if you promise the same back."

"I love you" was all I could reply.

But already too many swollen kisses were between us. Fervent.

Our unspoken goodbye would never be forgotten, but never loved.

.

Crestal helped me dress with solemn hands. The games allowed two layers this year; one a small suit of black material, cut off to expose my legs and arms; its properties unknown as of yet and a pair of trousers and jacket in a matching fabric. Both were lightweight, but that only made me think of how easy they were to cut through.

The loading bay was a sorry one. Grey walls for grey faces.

"Can you keep a secret?" I asked out into the stale air. I had to let everything go before getting into that chute.

He nodded.

"I'm going mad." I admitted.

"The games will do that." He focused only on working my jacket's zip.

"My mind's been wrong for longer than that. It started with just dreams. They were so vivid and convincing. And they bled out into reality and all I can do now is see and hear them."

"Them?"

"Just different thoughts, like they're not my own."

I felt so empty. Empty even of the thoughts I now professed.

"It's like everything's been waiting for this moment. And whilst the things I see and hear now are overwhelming, I think they're just the crest of the wave."

"Crest. Cresta." The word lulled upon his tongue like a moored boat. I did not mind how he wandered, he could do with my name what he liked; I had not much use for it now.

"_Crestal_" I whispered back.

"You truly are a sea creature, aren't you?" He smiled for the first time, his lips forming a smooth curve.

"I don't think I could bear to be anything else."

The bell finally tolled, and I stepped back into the lift's small confinements, waiting for it to set me free.

I gave him a final nod.

With a forlorn shudder, it began to rise; rise up to a death not yet known.


	20. Blood Hit the Sky

**XX.** **Blood Hit the Sky.**

**.**

Was this quite real? This fear. This silence. Both. They're mocking my senses. In tangent. In tandem. In tremulous lies.

Not so long ago I was kissing you. I could still breathe, and now I'm not so sure.

The cannon sounds and the prison around me erupts.

Something inside me shatters. I cannot stay what, but the sound of that cannon, so terrible and clean. It slices into my cortex. The very hemispheres of my brains are pealing apart, screaming out to the apostles of my mind to save them.

Is this a loss I cannot fix?

I think it so.

The red sky cries as the black marble columns tower about me. Nothing makes sense anymore. All I know is that I am running.

Present, past and future muddle in the fetid shallows of my mind, and all I feel is the ground beneath my feet as I run towards the cauldron that lies before me. The cauldron of boiling children.

Why are they all painted red?

Who is spilling out? Spilling out onto me. I can't tell if they're a boy or a girl, only that their face has been bashed in.

Yet they are still running. And now falling, taking me down as their cracked skull suppurates more and more red thoughts.

Everything is warm and humid and I wonder if I can crawl under this spasming child and hide between their ribs.

I am not living. Surely not? Not in such confusion.

I feel the hot ground beneath me and it is moist. From where I lie, weighted down by this dead child I see the world play out at an angle. It's like they're all dancing. Twirling, spinning in a nauseating game until one lunges and caresses the other too close. Mouths open up from where their stomachs used to be and long hot tongues slip out.

They're calling out for me to join them but I pretend to be asleep. No one awakes the sleeping. I want to close my eyes, pluck them out. Do I still dream? Not until my eyes adjust.

My dancing partner is gone, limply thrown about me with a dwindling effort. They must not have been very good at dancing, for they are too large for me to move, to brutish to be any good. They need to stop sleeping, so I can take the next shift.

A new partner approaches. He lifts away my old one and kicks them in the head. I really don't think that's the right way to teach anyone how to dance. Are they about to teach me? Can they not tell I am asleep.

Maybe they can't and that's why they're reaching for my hair, yanking it about to pull the plug on my consciousness. My eyes are rolling about, shuddering and my mouth gasps for the air that suddenly escapes me.

Their hand is around my neck. A sharp finger presses to my hairline and suddenly everything is white and hot and flashing, pulsating.

"Can you feel the knife?"

Warmth; boiling liquid falling down my face, splattered kisses. Rain, it must be. Rain from the sea above the sky.

They're pealing at my skin, carving it up like hot butter to make a mouth upon my forehead. They want to see my skull, see the swimming thoughts below the flesh.

I close my eyes; sink into a sea of white-hot sulphur, bitter and unkind. My arms and legs begin to spasm, jolts of alternating rigor travelling up my limbs, animating my body in a way I have never experienced. I am dancing at last. But we are not dancing together.

The hand disappears but the pain does not.

And so I run, run because I still can. My eyes are still so tightly shut.

I am lost, and where my heart once led me, I have no guide.

All I have is my empty head, and it's bundle of useless nerve endings.

My eyes open.

But I cannot see.

.

"_She looks half mad." Joanna's voice is stung with a bitter empathy, but is too hollow for any use at soothing his worry. _

"_Sorry. Is that wrong to say?"_

_He shakes his head. _

_They're sitting in a corner of a viewing room. By now it's emptied of its earlier capacity. He's slumped in a chair as he watches her narrowly avoiding being scalped. Blood runs down her face and he wonders if he'll ever see it's precious light again. _

_After too many minutes spent out in silence her voice rises up again. _

"_Man the fuck up. What use are you moping around? Or is this pity party going to continue even after we've put her in her grave?"_

_His mouth gapes emptily. Of course the thought has crossed his mind. Far too many thoughts have crossed his mind. Countless spiraling possibilities haunt him. They cloud his vision so much so that he has practically lulled himself into a stupor. _

_He watches as his mind conjures up the thousand different ways they could tear her apart. And all before his helpless eyes._

"_What use am I to her anyway?" _

_He can hear Joanna's breathing hitch._

_She's in front of him, calloused palms raining down hard about his shoulders. _

_Her face comes up close, leering. She once could have been pretty, but that would have only been a mask. Beneath that layer of pulpy skin a thousand nerve endings smolder in restless confusion and rage. She could never be content with anything other than a contortion. _

"_Every use. Everything. You want her. People want you. Goddammit Finnick you're a commodity. Put yourself to use and earn her a way to survive," something is awakening in her throat, a large vein throbbing with an ill-earn vitality._

"_Survive?" It's a whisper of a word, and yet it still stings him. That's a possibility he's hardly explored. _

_"Do I even want her to survive?" He's thinking aloud, but even if he'd kept the thought to himself, he'd still feel guilty. _

_"Do I want her to live like we do? Broken and discarded. We've been spoiled. She hasn't. Not yet," Is he being selfish to wish to end her misery, and not prolong it? _

"_She can't have my life," he can't condemn her to this; this life of fractured sympathies and hollow promises. He sees her now, sees her spasming on sullied sheets, her muscles twitch as her face contorts, the scar upon her forehead splitting open to join her mouth in a scream. _

_He hardly notices as Joanna's throws his glass to the ground and picks her way through the broken shards. _

_She pauses at the door._

"_At least she'll have a life."_

.

I never wanted to be blind.

What has happened to my head? I cannot see, I cannot think. It's as though that cannon broke some pivotal piece of my mind and I'm disintegrating.

Dissipating,

Distorting,

Disembowelling.

I keep on running, because that's what they tell me to do. Keep running until you can't hear anymore.

Slowly my senses are leaving. First went my sight, and soon all the sounds will dissolve as well.

I collapse now, no longer full of breath. The air is warm and clammy, like the touch of hot hands. It's there between me, between my lungs. Another seizure might be coming. My heart is rapping upon the door, eager to get in.

The ground is hard below my back; I can feel it cutting at my spine, nibbling away with tiny marble teeth.

Shattered memories of a time only just past supplements my inner eye. What I'd seen, what I'd heard, all had been thunderous. The world had been painted black. We were within a bowl. A giant bowl, filled with a soup of sweat and blood. Even the tree's had black bark, those straggly little nubs of splintered limbs.

I want rid of this world. Rid of the stones around me. Come pack them up. Disrobe the floor of its carpet of dying grass. Strip the mountain of its paint and pack up the sky. Dust away the clouds and drain the ocean.

I wish to be in oblivion. White. Black.

Nothingness.

No words, no sight.

No thought.

Nothing.

No.

N

.

_The blood's caked her face so that he can't recognise it anymore. _

_It's in her mouth, in her hair, in her eyes. She's going to drown in her own blood. Just as he's drowning in this bed. Joanna had been right. Stray hands litter the sheets, stained and soiled by a commitment he must uphold. _

_It had been by the District 1 boy. He'd made his mark across her precious face, carved open half of her forehead._

_He traces the line across the enamelled face beside him. He wonders what it would be like to take a knife and sully this woman, just as she had sullied him. The light from the television screen flickers out across the elongated planes of her face. Bile, blood and battered limbs. She sleeps through all of it. He's just watched another kid have their face bashed in. _

_She's promised antibiotics and bandages but he intends to squeeze a meal out of her before dawn._

_The screen fills with a sight of the arena. Two hemispheres of rocky terrain, connected together through a series of interconnecting caves. Two damns border each bowl and he knows it's only a matter of time before they'll burst. The only way Annie might survive is if she begins moving to higher ground. _

_He watches as she has another fit. _

_He feels sick. _

_He is sick. He hopes for a second he chokes, because selfishly he doesn't want to watch this anymore. _

_She's his Annie. His fearless Annie. The girl who finds secrets in stones. Who swims and takes not a single breath, but lets the sea sustain her. Who glances to the stars and sees not a sky full of rocks, but one of stories and scars. _

_Where is their story going? _

_It can't be like this. They were meant to grow old together. They were going to swim out to sea and never come back. To live on that paradoxical island and fear nothing and no one. _

_He wakes the woman beside him. _

_He will not let their story stop. _

.

I am now the rabbit who eats up the snake.

The bowl of my heart spills out all contests of love. I am done. Finished.

This organ whose purpose had once been to warm and sway the feelings of affection, is now nothing, puerile.

It is useless in a land of lost love.

Now it is reserved to the pure and only use of pumping oxygenated blood round my body, fuelling my bones to keep on moving. My very marrow is spoilt by sweat. It leaked from my pores to run rivets in the blood caked upon my cheeks.

I can now see.

Blood, like a thick crust, covers my face. Flecks of dry red clay are scattered about me, colouring the dirty floor. I prised my lids apart, slipped my finger under the lid and demanded to my retinas that they work.

Blindly, I'd crawled inside a warren and through some superior force survived a single night.

I don't want to leave.

I'm as safe as I can be here. The earth around me is warm and wet. The walls of this warren are made of red clay. And so the ground now bleeds for me. We bleed together.

But I haven't bleed on time, as I should expect.

I am now the rabbit who eats up the snake. And like the rabbit my coated face breaches the air and surveys the land.

Mountains surround me. I am in a hall of kings.

We are in a canyon. A canyon of rippling walls. Walls that move and swim as fingers of milky white penetrate the silent marble.

Canyons and caves. Canyons, caves and corridors.

I am in a corridor. I am below the corridor. A corridor curtained with blood. My own I think.

It's getting dark and so I sink back into my hole and curl up.

I can feel the trees eating up my oxygen. They take my breath and drink it up like hungry children and milk. The stink of the dead is in the air and the night presses in like a zealous onlooker.

It was as though the dark air has coagulated.

From the spilt in my skull something comes pouring out. I can feel it, sense it's breathing. It crawls at first, but now it walks. It's clawing out from between my seams and will soon consume me.

A beat. A pause. A breath.

Someone is outside.


End file.
